Homespun
by JimmyDANj2
Summary: When the heart's cleared and there's no pain left to feel, what remains are cobwebs twined from blood. Vale is but scattered fragments held together by fraying corners. The Grimm clutch the world; monsters befit legend sprung to life, titanic beings comprised of loss. Red runs the streets; what remains to fight stretches thin, their wills just short of broken. But fight, they will.
1. Show me yours, Part One

To Ruby, home was a concept that spun in circles. Something nebulous that, most of the time, meant nothing to her.

Maybe it meant her sister. Hair spilling back like golden fire, fists clenched so firmly that the faint outline of bone would distend the skin, mouth firing cringeworthy jokes as if they were bullets.

It might have meant her uncle Qrow. Head tossed back more often than not, either in biting laughter or to cram booze down his throat. Stubble dotting his chin how craters dot a landscape, or the moon.

Perhaps her father, ever reassuring, ever supportive and proud, and faithful, but tired. So, so very tired.

Her mother, the greatest person she knew.

From her twenty years of being alive, she knew: to keep a home, she had to keep an open mind. It was something forever shifting, moving with her as she wobbled aimlessly from one place to the next.

From one hunt to another.

She thought of all this, of what home meant, as the councilman in front of her talked. And talked and talked.

"And you understand, Miss Rose," he sternly explained, mouth pursed. His face was a perpetual grimace of resting disapproval. "That this is a matter of the utmost importance. _Utmost._ "

She bit her lip to keep from rolling her eyes. Of course she understood. _She_ was the huntsman, wasn't she?

"The Grimm are encroaching," he continued. "And it is only huntsmen like yourself who prevent the worst from occurring. We are at an impasse where, if there's the slightest misstep on our parts, Vale will be lost. Lost, as in gone."

She knew what lost meant. She wasn't a babbling toddler.

"Uh huh," she nonetheless responded, features twisted into some strange semblance of a smile.

"I am serious," he narrowed his eyes. "More and more of the land surrounding us now festers with Grimm. This next attack, I fear, might spell the end. They're coming, and we know it, and we can barely muster what we can to stop it."

Ruby sent her eyes rolling from one corner to the opposite, taking in Vale as she stood in its outskirts.

Once upon a time, it was a kingdom. Sprawling with bustle, streets brimmed with shops, children stumbling, mothers laughing, criminals lurking. Gold spilling from the laps of merchants as they haggled, stars winking from above.

Now no stars winked. A canopy of black shrouded the sky, affecting the likeness of twilight, day in and day out.

Now, her eyes took in the haggard cloaks of frequent travelers, of pubs run down by time and survival. There was so little of what remained of the town, she could crane her neck and see from one end of it to the other.

The man slumped, his posture no longer so pompous.

"Please, Miss Rose," he whispered. "The few of us that are left, we'll blow away like leaves in the wind. The Grimm are closer than they've ever been, and this time they'll eat us alive without anyone outside being the wiser. We won't even be a memory."

She drooped, suddenly contrite.

"I know. I'm sorry, Mr. Oobleck."

Councilman Oobleck sighed, running a hand through greying hair.

"Honestly, it's almost a foregone conclusion that Vale won't make it through the week. Huntsmen are stretched thin as it is, but this coming horde…"

He shook his head. The lines around his eyes seemed to grow more pronounced by the second.

"But there is a slim chance. A one-person job, and it's why I called you here. You're top of the leaderboards, after all."

Right. That clump of wood tacked haphazardly in the center of town. Scrawled across its poster in faded ink were the rankings, there for anyone who wished to see. Personally, Ruby never actually checked, but enough passersby have gushed to her that there wasn't any way she could forget how she measured against the rest.

"Huntsmen hunt Grimm in teams," he said, wringing his hands anxiously. "That's always how it is. The only one who doesn't, and has made it back from hunts alive, is you. No one else can do this job."

She heard what was unsaid. _If you don't accept, we're all doomed._

She shouldered Crescent Rose, the scythe's blade delicately pressed along her cheek, and sighed. Of course, she knew from before he even approached what her answer would be.

* * *

Timidly, she eased open the swinging doors to the tavern, wincing when the creaking seemed overly loud. It didn't, however, drown out the raucous chatter of men and women scattered about in near-decrepit chairs, amidst tables hinged on spindly legs.

Her eyes, silver like a waning moon, roved the room.

There. It wasn't very hard to find him, considering he was the only one alone at his own table, morosely picking at his certainly cold plate of noodles with a dingy fork.

Taking a deep breath, Ruby took meek steps towards the back, where he was. She worked alone for a reason, and she wasn't looking forward to having to renege on her procedure.

Alas.

"Um…hi."

A bit startled, the man at the table swiveled his vision from his food to the walls and finally to her, his mop of blond moving with him as he stood.

He said nothing as his palms pushed against woodgrain. His eyes searched her form warily.

"Um…" she tried again. "Jaune, right? Jaune Arc?"

Looking into his eyes was a little like plunging into a cross-section of ocean – Ruby flinched, unsettled – the blue of it shimmering with caution. A bit of recognition, too.

"Yeah," he answered, sitting back down, apparently not deeming her a threat. "I'm Jaune. And, uh…you're Ruby Rose, aren't you?"

Hard not to notice when the top ranked hunter decides to look for you in a pub.

She nodded, tentatively taking the seat opposite.

Silence stretched like a canvas of smothering tarp, both parties fidgeting nervously.

"Well…" he offered at last. "What do you want?"

He did not say it unkindly, but more in the manner of someone who didn't know what possible else he _could_ say.

"I…" she sighed, averting her gaze. "Sorry. I'm not really a…people person."

"Yeah, uh," he pursed his lips. "I'm pretty much the same. But, I mean, I guess…spit it out? It's got to be easier than stewing here saying nothing, right?"

"Uh huh," she muttered. "Okay, well. There's a Grimm attack coming. It's not public knowledge yet, but…well, it's gonna be bad."

He suspected as much. He'd run the numbers, and they all pointed to a veritable Grimm-pocalypse.

"Like, really bad," she chewed her lip. "As in Vale probably won't last through the weekend."

"Okay," he nodded. "But why are you here talking to me about it?"

"I-I've been assigned a hunt. By the council. The thing is,"

She faltered, brushing sweat from her fingers to her skirt.

"The thing is that the horde isn't the problem. I mean, it's a _problem_ , but there's a bigger one. The reason Vale's in so much danger is because of one particular Grimm, at the back of the swarm."

She sighed.

"You're a hunter, too, Mr. Arc. You know as well as I do that…that even a single, run of the mill Grimm is a monster that normally takes at least a squad of four or five hunters to handle. They're nightmares. They're titanic, compared to us. As for me, I – oh, and please don't take this as me bragging!" she cried, seemingly horrified at the very idea. "I swear that's not what I'm trying to – "

"Whoa, whoa," his eyes widened, his hands pushing air in a placating motion. "I get it. And hey, I mean, if anyone gets to brag it's you. You're the only person who can complete hunts _by herself_ and make it back to tell the tale."

Still worrying her lip, Ruby continued, albeit a little more at ease.

"Yeah, so, if this big Grimm at the back is allowed to get in after the littler ones, we can count the town finished. But it's near impossible for any large group of hunters to sneak past the horde and get to it. It has to be a covert thing."

"One with fewer people," Jaune caught on, nodding. "So the council told you to go it alone. But still, what do I have to do with…?"

He let the question linger. Let it meander in the air between them like a taste.

But Ruby made certain the taste was acrid.

"It's a Nuckelavee."

She spoke it like bone between her teeth. Like the toll of funeral bells sprouting from her lungs.

Jaune blanched, his knuckles abruptly clenched so tight they were white.

Suddenly it made sense. Suddenly Ruby's visit to his table clicked like a puzzle piece.

"Mr. Arc, you probably know why I'm here now. I…it doesn't matter how good I am. I can't hope to take on a Nuckelavee by myself. Honestly, if I had an army it wouldn't be enough. It's hopeless. But I have to try. Vale has to try."

Jaune seemed at a loss for words. His breaths came heavy.

"I s-still can't hope to do it myself," she went on. "It still can't be a one-person job. No matter the need for stealth, I need someone watching my back. And the word is you're the only person in Vale's documented history who's encountered a Nuckelavee and made it back alive."

He licked his lips, tried to speak. It came out a rasp. He tried again.

"Look, Miss Rose – "

"Ruby's fine," she interjected quietly.

"…Ruby. I'm not like you. Those stories about me…they misunderstand. I'm not that great; heck, I'm not even good. I got away, yes. But it wasn't because of any - of any - "

She shrugged, her smile listless, shoulders sagging in a dreary sort of acceptance.

"I've got no one else to turn to."

Hearing this, Jaune swallowed.

"That – "

He sputtered, the memories alone causing the blue of his eyes to sharpen in fear.

"That _thing_ isn't just a monster. It's…it's…."

He struggled for the explanation, his mouth working just as his hands groped at nothing.

Unable to muster it, he shrugged in resignation.

"It's suicide."

Ruby quirked a tiny smile. One tinged with grim surrender. A somber, desperately sad sort of affair.

"I know. Are you in?"

* * *

Jaune approached the airship with some modicum of caution. Of course, he treated everything in his life now with some modicum of caution.

"You're early!" Ruby noticed, craning her neck to greet him. She was seated in front of the ship dock, polishing her scythe.

"If we're gonna do this, might as well do it right," he shrugged with a tremulous grin.

Ruby tossed her head, gesturing towards the airship looming in front of her. Pale, stainless steel winked back at her.

"I commissioned one for us. We're going deep into Sanguine Forest, but it'll drop us off a ways away from where we think the Nuckelavee is. Still a three day ride, though."

Said forest sprawled beneath the dock, wide and verdant, lush to the point that one could almost forget it was festering with grotesque creatures. An expanse of green, shimmering nearly emerald due to the shroud of twilight covering the sky.

Jaune always shivered whenever he arrived at the dock. Not because of cold, but because of how far above it was suspended. Below was a terrain teeming with Grimm. Below his feet wriggled nightmares, each more ravenous than the last, each expendable, for a new horror would almost certainly take its place within moments of its death.

Silence trailed him as he walked.

"So…" he awkwardly fidgeted. "Are you sure you can trust your life with just me? I told you, I'm not anything special."

"No," she replied bluntly, but her eyes widened. "I-I mean! Sorry, sometimes my mouth doesn't really have a filter…"

But Jaune was almost relieved. At last, some normalcy. They were strangers, after all.

"Nothing about you, particularly," Ruby hurried to explain. "I just usually work alone. And...well, I don't really know you."

He wanted to tell her that he agreed. That at the very least, they would be in over their heads together. Maybe even some lie about how he wouldn't let her down.

But words had never come easily to him. This much, it seemed, they had in common.

Neither hunter said anything further. Nothing cut across the silence but the lazy whir of the propellers from above.

The tension was palpable. It smothered him.

Eventually, Ruby stood.

The both of them quietly stepped onto the airship's ramp, the silence carved into their bones.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** I've just finished watching RWBY season 5 coming back to it after a considerable period of downtime, but I've already had this idea for this fic long before, probably around when I finished season 4, hence the inclusion of Nuckly-kins. I've wanted to contribute to this fandom for a while now because the setting of it is pretty fun to play with, even if I do have some pretty big issues with how the series is written overall _(_ biggest one being _how can you have Pyrrha die and literally not have Jaune or Ruby who **watched her die** talk about it at all except for one obligatory forest scene which was not followed up at all and there's so much characterization potential and baggage there that they just don't touch upon and for what literal reason at this point did she die except for shock factor and gahhhhh pls stop me here I will quite actually rant until the sun has set)_. But at the least it's a fun time, and has its moments.

This fic is an attempt at a different sort of setting, confining the characters to the nitty-gritty, kinda utilizing the Grimm as they were meant to be in my head: these imposing unimpeachable creatures of sorrow that serve a real, near-apocalyptic threat. In the actual show I feel like they forgot the Grimm were anything other than generic mob hero-bait.

I plan to have this be a sort of series of small stories taking place within this desolate world, all loosely (or possibly not) interconnected. This first one is, obviously, the Ruby/Jaune arc, and is projected to be three chapters, of which I have written two. So the next one should be here pretty promptly, all bets are off for the third but fingers crossed lol. Okay I'm done sorry I'm so longwinded


	2. Show me yours, Part Two

It was several hours after take-off, their belongings discarded in the corner, the helm set to autopilot, that Ruby finally tried.

"Mr. Arc?" she found him in the meeting room. It was barren, with no distinctions save the circular table at the room's center, a staccato of shadows playing across its surface as daylight filtered in through shuttered windows.

"Huh?!" he jumped, but relaxed when he saw her. "Oh, uh. Hi, Ruby. P-Please, you can call me Jaune."

Another awkward stretch of gazing.

"So, Jaune, I was thinking," she took a deep breath. "Maybe we should talk about our plans of how to...y'know. Do this."

Jaune went stiff.

"Do what, exactly?"

"What else?" Ruby began to grow irritated. "The Grimm we're flying out to kill! You're the only one who's seen it; how would you suggest we deal with it?"

"Ruby," his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, lips cracked, head clouded by memories. "I told you already, you shouldn't expect so much from someone like - "

"Well, then why did you even come? This is a _big deal_ , Jaune, we can't just-"

The words, lodged in her throat. She almost gagged on them, frustration coloring her visage.

"I'm sorry," she bit out. "I...I just need something to go on. You understand, right?"

As she implored him, he truly did. He did, but…

 _A curve of crimson, like a splash of wine. Some of it got in his mouth and he spluttered. Strands of it fell, like woven blood, like velvet drapery._

" _Jaune," a voice belied the pain, her hair spilling about them both. "Run."_

" _No, no, please-"_

 _A smile framed in scarlet._

" _Run. I'll keep it occupied, but you must not look back."_

 _Hooves tore the ground asunder, and behind her, in front of him, a screech that rattled his bones._

" _I love you, Jaune. Sorry I never had a chance to say."_

"I...I came because-" he swallowed, his head swimming in smoke. "Because…"

"If there's anything," Ruby beseeched. "Anything at all you can tell me, to give us an advantage, any advantage, anything to stop us being balled up like newspaper-"

But it was clear Jaune could not offer something now.

Ruby crumpled, a defeated expression wilting the corners of her eyes.

"It's not just our lives on the line, Jaune. I hope...I hope you at least know that."

He did. But it wasn't the first thing on his mind at all.

* * *

The second day on the ship saw Ruby in the gym, practicing with Crescent Rose.

Every stroke, a picture of grace and poise. Every bit of footwork laden with experience and blistering speed.

The blade thrust, meeting resistance as the column's top pushed aside air and not the curve of it. Then a whirlwind of metal, Ruby's fingers effortlessly gripping and re-gripping the handle.

Jaune walked in that instant, momentarily mesmerized by the twirling. Her movements painted her across the gym hall like a tapestry.

A bead of sweat trailed Ruby's lips as she turned to greet him.

"Jaune," she panted, planting her scythe and hunching over to catch her breath, one hand splayed across her skirt. "Did you need something?"

"Um, yeah. Hi. No, just...wandering the ship. Isn't much to do around here."

Ruby's eyes narrowed, and Jaune winced at the implication.

 _There would be if you'd agree to sit down and share._

Instead, she relaxed and timidly beckoned him towards her.

"W-Well, if you're bored, we can spar. Y'know, practice for before we starting fighting Grimm."

He could tell she was unused to having company aboard the flight preceding the hunt.

Still, Jaune was mortified.

"S-Spar?!" he exclaimed, aghast. Me against the top ranked in the leaderboards? I dunno, I'd just slow you down."

"Of course not," Ruby insisted. "We have to keep ourselves sharp."

Despite his misgivings, he nodded, unhooking Crocea Mors from his back.

As he unfolded his shield, saddling it to his elbow, Ruby approached.

"So," she began conversationally. "I should probably know what your Semblance is. To get a good grasp of what tools we've got and such."

Jaune's spine involuntarily twitched.

" _So what is exactly is a Semblance?"_

" _Well, Jaune, it has to do with your Aura. Remember I told you? Aura's the manifestation of our soul. It bears our crosses. It shields us. It envelops us from the inside out and lets us stand the chance we do against Grimm."_

" _Yeah, I got that. You said I had a lot of it."_

" _Mmhmm. A Semblance is sort of a manifestation of a your Aura. Tangible ways in which all of us can distinctly wield our soul."_

" _Right. Like what I've seen you do with your sword and stuff. How do I know when I've got mine?"_

" _You will. In time."_

" _Sure doesn't feel that way."_

" _I've said you will so you will! Who's the mentor here?"_

" _You're like a year older than me."_

" _Just for that, today's training is twice as hard. Up and at 'em! No groaning, either!"_

" _Oh, god. I think I'd rather let the Grimm take me."_

"I, uh...don't have one. I know it's unusual. But I just don't."

Ruby blinked.

"O-Oh. No problem!" her smile, too perky. "Well, I can tell you mine!"

Jaune's mouth set in a line. He told himself the pity didn't sting.

"I, um, go fast," Ruby began lamely.

A pause. Then-

"You do what?" Jaune replied, blinking.

She pursed her lips, brushing aside a strand of hair rimmed red.

Sighing, she bent her knees, affording tension to her shoulders, pushing her toes into the floor so her heels curved up.

And quite suddenly, but for a shower of roses, Jaune was looking at nothing.

A finger tapped his shoulder, causing him to yelp. Swiveling, he took in the sight of Ruby waving demurely at him.

"Ruby, that's incredible! I didn't even see you move."

"I-It's nothing special," she replied modestly. "So should we get started?"

Jaune gulped, but nodded.

And in one blistering second, her eyes were inches from his, and he stumbled, nearly toppling as a curved blade arced towards him. The angle from which it swung was picturesque; it was a thing of beauty.

He just barely intercepted it with the hilt of his sword on instinct alone. Before his moments of comprehension could keep pace, the pressure lifted, the blade was gone, and his vision filled with rose petals.

Behind him, Ruby swept his feet from under, his head crashing to the floor as he grimaced.

She poised Crescent Rose above him, its curvature catching the light – seeming to wink, seeming to grin – before plunging it down.

He rolled hastily, metal shredding the air he once occupied.

Leaping to his feet, lips set in half-formed determination, he charged and let loose a flurry of strikes.

One from top corner to bottom; Ruby easily parried it aside. One, a horizontal slice – her feet were a blur as she took two steps back and let it careen harmlessly in front – and, twirling his wrist, his sword now gripped in reverse, he stabbed towards her chest.

Her legs were folded levers for a moment. Then she somersaulted over his head – he swore he felt her cloak tickle his matted hair – a veritable curl of red.

Next thing he knew, Jaune felt pointed steel digging gently into the hollow of his throat. Behind him, Ruby loosely held her scythe's handle in one idle hand, the blade of it bending around the junction between his neck and shoulder in a half-moon.

"Well, that was a total whipping," he laughed weakly. "I thought I'd at least last maybe a minute."

"Y-You're not bad, Jaune," Ruby said softly, removing her scythe from his neck. "I can tell you've had some training."

"It's okay, Ruby," he sighed. "You don't have to make me feel better. I told you, I'm as average as they come.

"Jaune, that's not true. The Nuckela-"

"It was her," he swallowed, his body pervaded by a shuddering breath. "Never me. She-"

His eyes squeezed shut as he cut short.

"Dumb luck, that's all it was," he whispered.

Ruby stretched one lingering arm towards him as he lumbered towards the door, but did not - could not, even as nails sunk into her palm and beads of red pebbled - pursue.

As so many times before, the words would not come to her.

* * *

By day three, the ship landed. The two of them quietly stepped from the extended ramp onto solid ground.

Ruby took a quick, familiar glance at her surroundings. Dense, thick foliage nearly blotted out what little light cast from overhead. Trees clutched greedily at the small breeze, sifting across branches and curling leaves.

They were in a small clearing, and Ruby spoke to Jaune for the first time since the day before in the makeshift gym.

"We're not far out enough past the main cluster of Grimm. If we can't sneak past before engaging the Nuckelavee, we're dead for sure."

"Okay," Jaune nodded, holstering his sword after a cursory inspection. "Um, how do we do that?"

"See those cliffs?" She pointed to their right where, sure enough, jagged crags loomed in distance, above the forest roof. "We'll make our towards them, and sidle along its edges, around the bulk of the forest where most of the Grimm prowl around. If we're lucky, we won't be noticed."

"And...if we are?"

"Then at least we won't have to worry about the Nuckelavee killing us."

He winced.

"Wow, you're not mincing words today, huh?" he attempted some levity.

Ruby looked at him. They were in closer proximity than they'd been until now, excluding their sparring session. It was now that Jaune noticed the dark circles swimming just under her eyelids. The deep, seated exhaustion pronouncing itself; what would have been liquid silver now drooped into a listless gray.

"I'm past that, Jaune. I just want this to...end. I want it over."

"Ruby-"

But she had already marched towards the forest wall, her steps unfettered. Her gait that of a woman steadfastly resigned to her mission.

And Jaune wanted more from himself. He wanted to reach - screaming blood all the while if need be - inside and pull something out of his wretched depths. A mote of comfort, inspiration, anything _useful_ , but-

He could only follow.

* * *

It was when they'd walked for hours, shaded by trees, mottled sunlight weakly breaking through both sky and wood - their shoulders brushing cliffrock, their feet soldered by gravel - that Ruby's resolve splintered.

Not for the fight. Never for the fight, but her timidity could only hold her back so much.

"We're walking to our death, Jaune."

Hair oil-slick with sweat, moist heat beating down like the weight of the world, Jaune nearly tripped from the surprise.

"What was that, Ruby?"

"I said we're walking to our death, and I'd have to be blind to see you're not still hung up on whatever happened with the Nuckelavee you're not telling me, but this isn't a carnival game!"

Jaune, jaw slack, shirt matted and skin-clung, could hardly stutter a word in edgewise before Ruby pressed on.

"Do you n-not get it?" she chattered, eyes shimmering but narrowed. Her mouth was parch-dry, lips cracked, nose wrinkled but flared.

"I know it hasn't been easy," she grit between clenched teeth. "But I'm here risking my life for this. Asking you to risk yours. Risking the continued welfare of _Vale_ on this stupid, fruitless venture, and you can't have the common decency to get over yourself for two minutes and give us the smallest of fighting chances?"

With every word, her pitch rose, hysterical. Her voice had sharpened like liquid, bloody like something knife-seared until she was near-screeching.

"It hasn't been easy," she repeated, tongue slack with agitation. "It hasn't, it hasn't, _I_ know it hasn't, okay? I of all people. But _no one's_ had it easy! Not a single god-forsaken person has come out of this endless fit against those monsters intact. You're not special, I'm not special, everyone's lost so much they've got nothing in them but bones and dust where their heart should be!"

Jaune stood, rooted, paralyzed, encumbered with sweat and disheveled hair and the gravity of a thousand unshed tears.

"You think you're the only one?!" she screamed, hands gripping fistfuls of crimson-charred-black, nails biting scalp. "You think I can't tell what happened to you?!"

"Who was she, Jaune?" she sneered at him with almost delirious cruelty. "Who died for you? I can tell you mine."

Jaune dimly noticed the bitter irony of her verbal repetition. A discussion, from Semblance to death.

"My uncle was the first. It was years before anyone else. He just left on a hunt one day and never came back. My mother. She was there when the Grimm tore down our roof, and shrieked herself bloody for us to get away. My dad when he couldn't bear to lose his wife for a second time, told us to go on when he turned around to go back to his own death. My sister, when the Grimm caught up to us as we were running. She hid me under the knot of a dead tree, telling me not to come up for anything or anyone. She was so brave, but that didn't make a difference when they ripped her limb from limb. I was a blubbering child who couldn't even _watch_. I couldn't block out the sound, though. Can't block it out even now, most nights."

Jaune also remembered, but now something came to the forefront.

" _It's very important to keep yourself calm, Jaune. Huntsmen can only call themselves such if they can maintain a certain standard of level-headedness at all times. No matter the hunt, no matter the tragedy."_

She perched herself on an outcropping of boulder, hair fraying in the muggy wind.

Without facing him, she spoke.

"So don't _sit_ there and think you've got it bad."

Whatever had seized her was mounting, boiling, fringing off of the abyss of Grimm below them when they were docked, off the abyss of grim churning in her most pungent and twisted of depths. Her heart of hearts, closed in by rose petals so red they were black.

And still, the guilt bloomed like acid in his chest, like a bubble fit to burst, but the memory carved itself, concrete, until it dangled from his lips.

" _Well, sure, that makes sense. You have to keep rational during combat."_

 _Her armor, so like her: pristine and impeccable. Threads of gold woven in._

" _Not just that, Jaune. It's because of the nature of Grimm. Negativity breeds negativity. Pain, stress, anger, solitude; all of it waxes greater in each others' presence. They feed off of each other in people. So it stands to reason that Grimm, the very manifestation of such things, would be attracted to them. To a person's despair."_

"Don't _sit_ there and tell me you can't, because I have. I _have_ because I've had to, because to do anything else is to say I've died with them. And maybe I have, but what's left, Jaune? What's left for us but this."

Jaune's remorse nearly dizzied him, more sweltering than the heat itself, but of even greater importance than that was-

"Ruby-"

"What?" she unhooked Crescent Rose - for comfort, or to vent, Jaune couldn't tell - and the distress with which she squeezed the handle so repeatedly was habitual. "What, Jaune? We're out here to die with nothing to show for it."

" _What does that mean?"_

" _It means the terror they unfold is compounded upon us. Every village toppled means another ten are under threat. To be any sort of defense against the Grimm at all means you'll have to kill your own feelings."_

"Ruby, please, the Grimm-"

"Yes, the Grimm," she smiled, but it was a callous thing. It was something within her, writhing and festering for years, externalized for this brief, dangerous moment. "We've stranded ourselves, Jaune. Stranded Vale in its sinkhole."

" _If you can't. If they smell even a pinprick of your fear…"_

" _Then…?"_

" _Then they'll thrive, until we don't."_

To her credit, when Jaune hollered her name and black bursted from the trees tendril-like, she leapt from the rock so fast, red bled into charcoal and she vaulted over the - vines? - and Crescent Rose buried itself tipfirst into the ground as she landed.

Emerging from the dense verdant boundary, facing the cliffs at Jaune's back, was a face familiar to him only by nightmare, singed by torrid recollection, memory-warped and ink at the edges.

The "vines," he realized, as claws contorted like snakes - creeping along the gravel, popping bones as they moved - were limbs. Its arms.

A skull adorning nothing, jaws steepled, its throat molten, its insides beating magma, encased in a skeletal clutch.

Like an ivory tower, it loomed above them just as he remembered. Incontrovertibly massive, seeping black in the ground, it dwarfed them.

It cast a shadow and they lived in it.

The white splinters it called teeth broke wide, accompanied by an incessant clicking.

It let out a deafening screech, so piercing it traveled like cracks in the ground, like bone in the water, scattering birds, cleaving the shadow of ozone that blocked the sky. It blared off the canyons, moved the forest like it was some roused, lumbering beast, thundered like the pulse of a deranged earth's heartbeat.

Ruby's ears were bleeding. Jaune stood rooted to the spot, the weight of the world so pronounced like metal across his shoulders. Any hope they had was drowned by the bedlam.

For the Nuckelavee is composed of death.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

Poor Ruby. I'd be a little pissed at Jaune too. Part 3 is pending!

Review? I'd love to know what you thought. :)


	3. Show me yours, Part Three

Her grip on Crescent Rose was so unrelenting her knuckles were bloodless.

Breaths pervaded Ruby's body like twisted knives. She took great, hoarse lungfuls of them, eyes trembling, her body caught between coasting the tides of her frustration and her sudden, halting fear.

She exchanged a quick, panicked glance with Jaune. They could practically _see_ the other's heart plummet at the same, breathless moment.

They had no plan. No ace in the hole, no reinforcements, no last-minute salvation. Whether or not it was Jaune's fault didn't matter. Now, it couldn't matter less.

Hooves clattered towards them, muffled by dirt. In their wake oozed darkness. It trickled like blood, or maybe oil, or maybe the most craven of hells and ambrosia-laden of paradises all at once.

Every step inched closer was another nail driven. The two hunters were left with slim doubt in their minds that for them, for this, for Vale: hope was no longer a factor.

But that didn't excuse them. Not even if their chances were nil, not even if all that awaited them was death.

To flee was not an option. To give themselves to their fate could never be on the table. It wasn't about choice, and Ruby knew this best. Even Jaune knew. For better or worse, regardless of personal misgivings, they were hunters.

And it's without the clouds of hesitation (yet, fear smoke-thick in her lungs; yet, tongue coated with resentment, but never is there hesitation) that Ruby charges, a bolt of crimson, shriek bubbling from her throat, fingers poising Crescent Rose like death, already mid-swing.

The air sung with steel as she struck the monster's leg, trying to dig the blade in as silver grinded fruitlessly against sinewy black.

The black gathered. She blinked, unsure if her fear had unhinged her for a moment.

"Ruby, your left!" came Jaune's panicked warning.

She leapt in retreat, legs extended to afford herself the most propulsion. Jaune, as before, could hardly catch even her form, such was her speed.

But regardless, a split-second too late. The limb, almost comically disproportioned - stretched where it should be thick, thin at the neck where wrist should commence the hand - more appendage than arm, zipped past her side, nicking her shoulder.

She winced. Her Aura had flared instinctively for protection, but still specks of blood disseminated as she hurtled backwards.

Her eyes briefly trailed the ground. Splotches of red dotted the distance between her and the Grimm, tracing her retreat.

Jaune had crept warily to her back. He put to words what she was thinking.

"Your Aura might as well be paper when this thing is concerned. If you take a direct hit…" he trailed off, but Ruby had no trouble filling in the blanks.

She grit her teeth, held her scythe aloft in a staunch posture, and, again, bolted towards the Nuckelavee. To Jaune watching, it was like a momentary flame, a flash of heat that died before it began.

"Wait! If you go in without a plan-"

It was mesmerizing to behold, even as he was ignored. It was a waltz of crimson: Ruby darted around the creature like brief, curving sunbeams. Untarnished steel seemed to shimmer in four separate places at once, in one moment gliding along the Nuckelavee's mask attempting to dislodge it, in another carving up a confined storm around the more equine segments of its massive torso.

Its skin - rough as if hewn from leather, yet textured like sludge - seemed to contort wherever she slashed, seemed to warp before her eyes. Regardless, it remained unmarred by her assault. However they were placed, her strikes glanced off like they would reinforced steel.

Its arms twined, twisting through the air and making vague groping motions, the eerie clicking of bones yet again accompanying every unnatural curl of its fingers. Every time they reached for her, Ruby was already elsewhere.

Jaune hardly took two steps before the creature let loose another unearthly screech. It halted Ruby in her tracks momentarily, forcing her to duck hastily as a line of flesh swerved just inches from the top of her scalp. The distraction, however, caused her to be ill-prepared as a hoof as large as she was slammed mercilessly into her back.

Pain unlike anything she'd ever felt lanced across her spine and into the thrum of her chest. Her Aura, meant to shield, dissolved like it had never been in place, like wisps of a fleeting star burned away. She plunged away from the treeline, coughing up blood mid-trajectory.

Jaune raced to her side in a frenzy, boots hobbling as panic overtook his features. He lifted her head into his lap, trying his best to cradle it gently in case of further agitation. Bits of vomit flecked in with the blood dribbling a miniature river into his hands.

"Ruby! Ruby, say something!"

She groaned, barely propping herself up enough to look up at him. Her vision blurred as she tried to blink it into focus. She saw blue, finally, and dimly thought of the ocean. She was reminded that Jaune's eyes were so very, very disconcerting. They threatened to overwhelm anyone looking for too long.

She shook herself out of his grip, her legs quivering as she strained herself into a standing position.

"You're in no shape to keep going," Jaune trembled. "I'll fight it instead."

"You don't stand a chance," she replied, breaths labored. "Neither do I, but at least I might be able to keep it confused. Maybe get in a lucky hit."

"Ruby, don't-!"

But she was already off. As she jumped, she bellowed a cry, colored by her grief, her spirit arrayed into disrepair, her enmity towards the world that tore her into this, that stripped her layer by layer, flesh by flesh until she had no avenue left to her, none but the darkness at her front. At her front yet clawing from the inside.

Her scythe gleamed red from her own blood, red like the rest of her, seething and simmering like an unborn volcano, distressed and unsure and wanting so much to be compassionate but was instead pressed until there was nothing but the loss.

It struck the top of the head, right above the mask - gleaming cream-white but its eyes were coals burning cinders into her heart - even as the creature snapped its jaws repeatedly in a clack-clack-clack. Was it laughing?

Ruby wanted to laugh too.

For but the space between this moment and the next, she was suspended by nothing but Crescent Rose cleaved shallowly to the monster. The mote of impact at the monster's forehead seemed to writhe, as if worms were wriggling beneath the surface.

She, curiously weightless, clung to the horizon like a sunset, a scarlet grin simmering against the skyline.

She thought of her mother.

And then the limb - fingers spindly and spidery as they flitted up, rose with the swell of some macabre orchestra - speared through her stomach and out her back.

Ruby was one to endure her sorrows in the manner of burying them. No light of day, no noise, no notice until pushed to the brink.

Similarly, her pain was somewhat quiet. The skull mask of the monster, peppered softly with blood from her mouth. Not a reaction from her except a slight widening of her eyes.

" **RUBY!** " Jaune screamed, sprinting towards her, throat hoarse.

The fiend shrieked once more, before flinging Ruby aside (she seemed to float, hung and dangled like an ornament meant to embellish the blue of the sky, and then she toppled, wind-strewn and flailing like a mannequin with severed strings) and slamming the same hand, bloodied by its encounter, down onto Jaune's head.

He braced himself - head hunched, fists crossed in front, Aura flickering - as it collided, sending him careening back towards the cliff wall.

Incredibly compromised, his Aura nonetheless held, however dubiously. A trickle of red rimmed his lip, and he was left winded.

Panting, he noticed Ruby, far ahead and to his right - the monster's left - lying prone along the gravel. A drop of color amidst the dust.

 _I have to grab Ruby, then make a break for it,_ he thought desperately.

He blinked, before observing the dense shrubbery across the expanse, from his distance at the bottom of the rock bluff. Dense, thick underbrush. The greenery dark and lurking like shadows but ample camouflage were he to reach it.

 _Our only chance_ , he realized. _Is the forest is behind the Grimm. We have to somehow lose it among the trees._

He dug haphazardly into his pack even as the creature lumbered towards him, jaws clicking and clacking all the while.

From the pack's confines, he plucked a vial, its bottom listlessly glowing rust-red.

He brought it low to the ground, palm up, drew air into his lungs, and craned his sight to the top of the cliff. The canyon wall cast a shadow over him as he squinted.

With all his might, he hurled the vial as far up the wall as it would go. It hung, suspended between its initial force and the onset of freefall, before it erupted into an incandescent blaze. Flames crawled from the point of impact as the weight of the blast shattered the cliff and sent newly jagged boulders tumbling down.

The avalanche of gravel and earthy shrapnel hurtled towards him, but Jaune was already running.

The Nuckelavee screeched, its beady eyes trained on the rockslide plunging in its direction, its attention diverted from the human skidding along the ground beneath the fleshy alcove fenced in by its massive hooves.

As Jaune darted out the other side, clumsily breaking into a sprint as he passed under the creature's rear, he made a beeline for Ruby.

The rocks had collided with the monster's prominent frame, dispersing sand and dust until it a brief, light fog of it clung weakly to its vicinity.

An roar, high-pitched and angry like a swarm of wasps, and the Nuckelavee swiveled, once more leering its red-filmed gaze towards its prey. Its hooves tore dirt as, much too quickly, the distance between it and Jaune was being closed.

His visage, red from exertion, heart drumming a desultory tattoo against aching ribs, Jaune nonetheless did not chance a look back. He was sure that if he did, if he risked glancing behind him to the nightmare on his heels, his nerve would be lost and any hope they had of escape quashed then and there.

As he reached Ruby, he tried not to note as he did how much she resembled a corpse, her face ashen, deathly pale, fingers slender but placid and motionless where before they nearly always itched with motion, where before anxiety colored her cheeks and stained her nose and showed itself in the wrinkle of her lips as she chewed them, and even in her grief she had been a constant rocking palanquin, rickety but forever breathing life and he had never noticed how _small_ she really was -

He scooped her into his arms without breaking stride, even as the monster bore down on them both, even as it seemed only meters away-

Her head was cradled into the hollow of his neck, his lower arm wrapped securely about her dangling legs, and he simply ran.

He broke into the forest threshold, branches dragging along his cheek and shredding the fringes of his shirt. The sound of trees toppling and dense, leafy verdure crunching under sudden, distinguishable weight drifted dangerously close from behind him, but still he dared not look back.

Something lunged; the wind tickled the scruff of his neck, and he dove for a gap amongst thinning greenery.

He tumbled into an awkward somersault, trying his utmost to use his body to shield Ruby's as wooden extremities bit into his skin, as branches clawed him till he bled.

He landed into a clearing. His surroundings underwent a curiously muffled quality, and there was an unlikely peace to the area.

Before him, a sprawling meadow, the blades of grass somehow swaying where no wind currents traveled.

Still, he ran.

He ran until his wrists were numb from supporting Ruby's weight. He ran until his feet were blistered and screaming, until his shoes and soul were worn, his mind too numb to process anything but that he had to continue. That to stop would spell his end, but more importantly hers.

In the dim recesses of his mind, the farthest reaches unfathomable in his desperation to keep his legs moving, somewhere squirmed the remorse. The strands of guilt, far-reaching and spun gaping wide like the maw of the monster chasing them. So much he owed her for his inability, so much he ought to incur for coming along with only half a heart. The other half, locked away in ceaseless chains stretched over like spider silk, like long red hair and plated gold.

His body inevitably collapsed and adrenaline made way for the exhaustion, deep-seated and overdue. Even as his knees buckled, he made certain to place Ruby gently against the nearest oaken trunk.

He kneeled beside her. Tears, unbidden, gathered in the corners of his eyes, trickling against his nose as the day's events caught up. She looked lifeless. He wouldn't have been able to tell her from a corpse had she not still been bleeding.

He went through the motions of delving into his bag, lifting her shirt, spreading the disinfectant. She didn't flinch, nor move at what should have been jolting pain. Her cheeks were pale, lips still and cracked. Her stomach wounds composed of four separate, gaping cavities, each rimmed scarlet. One for each finger that gouged her.

Jaune's teeth found the edge of a bandage, and he tore it, before gingerly attempting to wrap the injuries. The smell of antiseptic pervaded the air, too clean and unnatural, too reminiscent of death and its stillness.

Almost immediately after he'd applied them, the bandages soaked through, already browning as the blood dried on either side. Too soon, there wasn't a trace of white. Jaune tried pressing his fingers to them. They came away sticky and red.

A hitch in his throat. His tears fell onto the wounds, diluting them pink and vaporous.

 _Not again_ , he thought.

She was going to die. And he couldn't do a thing.

Like before, he was helpless but to watch her seep away.

 _My fault,_ he knew. It always was.

In all things except perhaps eloquence, Ruby exuded beauty. War in her eyes, heart on her sleeve, she fought like a dance. Her movements spelled grace. Every timid curve of her brow inflected poise, every dip of her chin and grip of her fingers deliberated vigor, expressed her boundlessness. Even in anger and sorrow, she had too much love to give.

How could Jaune _let_ her die? Just as how he _let_ -

He couldn't, he couldn't, the earth seemed to shift beneath his knees, and he wanted to throttle himself, her, anyone, because he _couldn't_ abide this, and had he done nothing to help?

Had he learned nothing?

Now, leaned against the tree, she was pale and porcelain and listless, but undoubtedly she was beautiful.

Jaune brushed away some red on her shoulder. Not blood, he mused feebly. A rose petal. Flimsy and light and so very fleeting, but-

But beautiful. For Ruby, her Semblance wrote herself into perception, bared her soul for all to see, clear as fire, as night, that she was speed and beauty and red and love and pain, vying desperately for the surface, for who she was-

" _Well, I can tell you mine!"_

Her Semblance, lava pouring from the dragon's mouth, twisted bitter by-

" _Who died for you? I can tell you mine."_

By loss-

And Jaune only noticed it several seconds after the fact. It was a dim, peripheral sort of realization, a trivial thing. Even when he did, it didn't quite register.

Not when his hands, still pressed idly to the wounds, glimmered. Not when they took on such a luster that the trees cast their shadows away from the sheen. The light was large, the color of bile, and palpitated like an unsteady heart in the blundering throes of giving life.

Clumsy and uncouth and beaming like a miniature moon but somehow nauseating.

When Ruby gasped, Jaune's first thought was that his Semblance was _certainly_ not beautiful.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Hahaha I lied. Yeah, it's definitely gonna be more than three parts. I sort of suspected this as I was writing part 2, but – and I know people say this a lot and it's trite to say - but the story kinda grew a mind of its own and took over. Like I felt like I was possessed by a spirit while writing this lol. At least now I have some vague estimate as to how long these arcs _might_ be, though of course it will depend on the context of whatever episode I'm writing at the time.

It got pretty stream-of-consciousnessy and free-flowing towards the end there haha. Honestly my fingers were just sorta flying over the keyboard without my permission by then.

Let me know what you thought!


	4. Show me yours, Part Four

" _Jaune, if there's only one thing. Absolutely one thing you take away from me, then know this: do not relent. If you go down, you go down clawing, scratching, fighting until you're so far gone death becomes respite. Despite what's in front of you. Despite the pain. Don't end up like me."_

" _Wha- But why wouldn't I want to? You're so strong, and capable, and you help people out without ever asking anything in return-"_

 _A forlorn smile. Eyes misted over in recollection. Her hair, scarlet velvet draped across one shoulder._

 _She turned away._

" _Never forget your kindness, Jaune. It is your strength above others'."_

 _She cut a figure rimmed in gold, her armor catching the sun's radiance and making it her own._

" _In the future, people may depend on you."_

 _He saw the sun dip below the horizon, saw her gold tint crimson._

" _Don't turn your back, Jaune. Die screaming if you must, but don't turn your back."_

* * *

Her eyes were sleep-smeared and groggy, the lids fluttering as she regained consciousness. Slowly, the night blurred into focus, sky still obscured by the canopy of trees, stars still obscured by the perpetual, ceaseless screen of twilight.

Bright yellow tinged crimson dancing in her vision's periphery. A fire, crinkling like orange paper.

Sitting next to it was Jaune. Shadows played across his face, flickering in time with the flames.

Ruby lifted herself upright, noticing a blanket pooling off of her torso over the gravel.

"Her name was Pyrrha."

She jumped, startled. He hadn't yet glanced towards her.

"Uh, p-pardon?" she rasped, her throat miserable.

He noticed, before walking over and handing her a bottle of water.

"That's who died for me," he clarified.

"Oh," she bit her lip. "I s-shouldn't have...I didn't mean-"

"No, it's alright," he tried to smile. "Ruby, I need to apologize. For everything I've put you through since we set out. It almost cost you your life."

Ruby stared at him with eyes like twin, waning moons.

"Um," she hesitantly drew back the rest of the cover and scooted forward onto her knees. "Why _am_ I...y'know. Alive, if you don't me asking. I could've sworn the Nuckelavee…"

She trailed off, fidgeting with the the bandages wound securely around her stomach.

"Well," he smiled without humor. "Turns out, I do have a Semblance after all. Three guesses."

Her breath hitched, cold air sharply mingling with her lungs.

"You mean you healed me? From-" She swallowed. Her fingers, instinctively playing with the tapered hem of her wrappings.

"From _that_? Jaune that's, that's not just any old _Semblance,_ it's-"

She licked her lips, the words buzzing in her throat like arid weather, like a bundle of dormant heat.

"I-I tried testing it on myself," he whispered.

He showed her his hand, loosely wrapped in gauze.

"Didn't work. It isn't _healing_ , really, so much as…"

He brushed aside wisps of blonde as he contemplated.

"Pyrrha once told me I have a lot of Aura. More than the average person's worth. From what I can tell, I, I dunno, _siphoned_ it from myself and gave it to you. Gave you so much that your body went into overdrive and stitched itself back together. Like it almost didn't know what to do with it all and funneled it into your natural physical processes."

Ruby's looked at him like he was something wondrous. Or perhaps frightening. Was it revulsion, pinning him with her gaze?

"Jaune, that's incredible," Something in her, trembling, not entirely from cold. "You-"

She peeked again at those inscrutable layers of ocean, peeled away and vulnerable.

"You saved me."

He lurched ahead in shock, nearly tumbling into the fire.

"No, no Ruby, I-" he scrabbled his hands together and apart in some unfathomable, wild motion; his mouth, stretched gaping in some small horror. As if to dispel the very _idea_ of what she was suggesting.

"I didn't do anything of the sort," he stammered. "Not at all. Not like that. I let us - I let _you_ down. This entire way I was a pitiful mess until it was too late and you were bleeding out on the floor. I gave this mission nothing and you were the one who paid the price."

Ruby blinked. She searched his eyes with hers.

She tried to grin. It was an awkward thing, tentative and lopsided. A house stitched from bare wooden seams, teetering on a seaside terrace.

"Whatever else happened, Jaune, you did save me. I…"

She faced the fire, its embers reflected wistfully in her gaze.

"Thanks. 'M not used to someone having my back. Easier that way, y'know? Free from the worry that they'll leave one day."

Her face furrowed so the lines became pronounced, her weariness so exceptionally conspicuous, crumpling her features in the telltale signs of someone about to cry.

She twiddled her thumbs. Her mouth, creased like it was stuffed with starch. But her gaze was sincere as she continued her thought.

"But nobody would come whisking out of the shadows to help if things got bad, like you did. So, um. Thanks."

"That's an awfully positive outlook," Jaune mumbled. "I was just afraid, you know. Scared that I really am scum who abandons a friend when the chips are down. If I left you there, I would be beyond reproach. I wouldn't be able to look her in the eye when I finally die."

She craned her neck slowly, peering at him thoughtfully.

"Are we, then?"

"Uh, what?"

"Friends, I mean."

At his dumbfounded visage - eyes slightly bulged, mouth open but strained from the throat up, resembling a frog - Ruby actually released a nervous giggle.

From the light of the tickling fire, the bridge of his nose dusted pink.

"I'm sorry, too," Ruby spared him, her hands folded in her lap, suddenly contrite. "For going a little nuts before. I...it was just a lot to handle, what we were doing, but it was 'cause of me the Nuckelavee came and-"

"Ruby, there's nothing to forgive," Jaune's smile trembled. "I was surprised you didn't go off on me sooner."

She smiled back, and it was like a fog finally dispersed. Still, their remorse dragged at their heels like manacles, still the cobwebs stretched taut over their hearts, but finally there seemed to be some measure of complacency between the two huntsmen. At once the air seemed clear of poison; for the first time, it smelled of sap and the rosy odor of freshly trampled grass.

For the first time, Jaune felt exposed to her. Vulnerabilities laid bare at last; no longer did murky greys waft from his vision to hers. A veritable ocean, wide and brimming with blue.

"By Pyrrha," Ruby suddenly realized, chin perched delicately on her palm. "You don't mean Pyrrha _Nikos_?"

"Um, w-well," Jaune nodded. "That'd be her."

Her eyes glazed over in something like wavering respect.

"She's one of the best huntsmen in the world! ...Oh, I mean, it's not like I have to tell you that," she blushed. "But, like, I don't even hold a candle to her!"

"Yeah, but she didn't like to broadcast it," he replied. "In fact, to me it seemed like…"

He trailed off, lost in the mire of his thoughts.

"I would like to hear about her," Ruby broke his reverie, smiling. "Pyrrha. If...you don't mind, 'course."

"No, I'm-" he drew a deep, shuddering breath. "I'm done skirting. You, of anyone, ought to know."

He mused, averting his gaze to the campsite. Ruby had inched his way enough that she was practically spooled to his side like thread. The both of them, staring listlessly into the crackling flames.

"A small part of me knew I needed a reality check," he began. "Maybe it also knew somehow that you would be the one to give it to me, and that's why I accepted the job."

He grimaced.

"It hurts, thinking about her. About how Pyrrha died protecting me. It...consumes me, mostly. The guilt burning in my gut somehow turned into a sort of...fixation with what happened, yet at the same time I couldn't bring myself to face it."

His face, cradled by his palms as he slumped over.

"Sometimes I can't _bear_ it, Ruby."

Silence, and with it, the night's thrumming. A cadence of creature-pitches and swirling leaves and rustled black.

"There isn't really much to tell," From his wistful ashes came a small, rueful smile. "I suppose, at sixteen, I was even more pathetic than I am now, if you'd believe."

"Jaune," Ruby responded reproachfully. "Enough of that, okay?"

"Yeah, but-" and he actually chuckled. "I'm not kidding about that much. I saw her, so strong and beautiful, and it struck me how much of a difference there was between us. She was this golden, unreachable thing and I was just a selfish brat who ran away from his backwater village to strike it big in the city."

He sighed.

"I realized too late that everywhere might as well have been the same. Run down by Grimm. Vale wasn't a kingdom anymore, barely subsisting on scraps just like its citizens. As is typical of me," he laughed. "I ran away from the fact that I had to change _myself_ first."

"But then," and here, Ruby caught a glimpse of light in his eyes, echoed from the embers; for once, he seemed bright and truly happy, his admiration naked and golden. "I met her."

Jaune looked at Ruby, but his gaze was flung far beyond her, lost somewhere above her in stars concealed by the sheen of darkness. His throaty recollection was steeped in longing as he spoke, his fingers bunching fabric.

"At first, she refused to teach me. But I begged. Every day I'd go to any lengths to find her on the outskirts of Vale where she liked to linger and I begged her to teach me to be a huntsman. To be like her."

He chuckled.

"She told me outright that I had no idea what I was talking about and that the last thing in the world I wanted to do was be like her. Maybe she got lonely after a bit or maybe she really started to take pity on me - because I groveled, Ruby. _Oh_ did I grovel and to this day I'm not proud of it - but I wore her down. She agreed."

Ruby could tell he remembered these moments fondly, and the corners of her lips lifted slightly in the shared reminiscence.

"Um," she piped up. "I've heard no one really knows what happened to Pyrrha after…after, y'know, Mistral. As good as she is, I didn't think she'd still be...around."

He shrugged.

"I asked her about it, yeah. She told me she didn't want to talk about it and it was pretty clear to me I wasn't gonna get much out of her. So I didn't bother."

"She could I tell I was green," he continued. "A total novice clueless about the most fundamental of things, but she was patient. She spent the better part of three years teaching me the ropes. The best years of my life, honestly."

Jaune looked over his shoulder, far beyond the thickets of night and foliage to where Vale was.

"But around the time I was finally starting to come into my own was when things started to get really bad. You've been around here for a while, Ruby, you know what I'm talking about."

She nodded, folding her knees so she could hardly see past them.

"The Grimm attacks were getting dangerously frequent. More of them in each one," Jaune peered forlornly at his bandages. "Even now, we're on a suicide mission that probably determines if Vale lives or dies."

Ruby winced, hands huddled over her abdomen, over what must be scars behind the wrappings.

"Pyrrha-" he gulped. "Pyrrha was aware that I must've known about who she was, but she was always grateful I didn't pry. She didn't like it the few times I tried. But here was - _is_ \- a time that Vale _needs_ heroes. And she was floating around at the edge of Vale frittering her days mentoring a hopeless nobody. We went on a few hunts, sure, but mostly just to teach me, and-"

He sucked in a hoarse lungful of breath.

"She was Pyrrha the _Champion_. I felt like it was my fault that she wasn't realizing her potential, that Vale was in these dire straits and she wasn't at the frontlines. She told me with no small certainty that it wasn't because of me. And-"

He gnawed his lip.

" _Pyrrha, people are dying! I...I don't understand. If people saw that_ you _were there, fending off the Grimm-"_

" _This isn't up for discussion, Jaune," she told him stiffly._

" _I want_ everyone _to see what I see. To know how great you are! If you were out there-"_

" _Enough, Jaune. They don't need me."_

" _Are you kidding?! P-Pyrrha, Vale's being eaten alive, you could change everything. You're the best around."_

" _I can't."_

" _Who says?"_

" _I do."_

 _Gravel crunched underfoot as Jaune pushed off of the side of the cabin towards her._

" _Pyrrha, please," he implored, eyes downcast inches away from her folded arms._

" _It," her teeth, cleaved together. "Is none of your business. I can't help, and that's final."_

" _But_ _why not-"_

" _Because I_ **can't be** **trusted,** _Jaune!_ "

The flames had dwindled to glowing fumes, and the two of them sat there like shadows or husks, no longer thrown into sharp relief by light. As if they were filmy constructs of themselves, illusory and liable to disperse like faded smoke.

"At times," Jaune whispered. "It was like she hated herself. When she looked in the mirror, she didn't see what I saw."

Ruby reached out, feeling her way through the darkness to grasp his hand. They let their fingers drift like wisps threaded together.

"I," his tongue caught, but he jarred himself to speech. "I went and tried to help in her stead. Thought that maybe as soon as I helped fight the Grimm, have those couple of notches on my record, that I could tell people who taught me. I could - I could prove to them who Pyrrha was."

He shook his head.

"After all that, I learned nothing. Not a thing. A reckless greenhorn in over his head-"

His hair hung morosely in front, made twined gold by the few smoldering embers.

"I went in the forest alone. Pyrrha was particularly well-versed in solo combat versus Grimm like you, Ruby, and I thought I'd learned enough from her to take down one of the smaller ones."

His visage crumpled like something sour on his tongue. Bitterness, lining the roof of his mouth.

"Even just walking in, I already knew I'd made the mistake of my life. It was pressing in all around me, Ruby. The fear. Stuffed against me at every angle and I was choking on it, but that's what the Grimm live for. They smelled it like I was a morsel served up on a platter."

"I was afraid like I'd never _been_ afraid. And they came. Well, one did. You know which. I should count myself lucky I didn't draw it to Vale itself."

A beat. And a second. And Jaune gulped the night air like it was water and he was a sailor, adrift and unquenchable.

"If I think about it," he deliberated. "I hadn't actually seen Pyrrha fight seriously up to that point. The moment I saw her swoop in to save me from the Nuckelavee - her inhibitions discarded like trash - our practice sessions seemed like a joke. It was like…"

He frowned.

"It was like she was a typhoon."

 _She fought like bottled lightning. Like streaming frost, like serrated fire that withered her surroundings. Blurred them until they wilted in the face of her might._

 _Through her coursed power._

 _Fingers like tendrils sloped their way towards her, meaning to sever and gouge. With the smallest of movements, she averted herself. Fleshy darkness zipped by, scrabbled the air inches from her cheek, yet she remained unflinching._

 _Her blade, bordered gold, a blur of crimson as she tossed it in the air. Suddenly it stood rigid, floating like it commanded attention, pointed at the beast in front._

 _Pyrrha magnetized her shield as well, coursing it in an arc above her, catching the creature's jaws. It stumbled, the sword gave chase, nicked its mask._

 _The Nuckelavee screeched, unperturbed, bearing down on her._

 _She weaved through the limbs crashing down overhead, a veritable forest of flesh, sword darting back into her hand. She swiped, curved herself like water, her singular weapon soaring like impending glaciers, somehow a deluge of metal._

 _Still, the Nuckelavee seemed uninjured. Pyrrha's breath quickened over time. Small gashes began to appear at unsteady intervals across her skin, the squeal of her blade fruitlessly beating an unkempt tattoo._

 _Its arms, suddenly whirling like a propeller, at speeds hitherto unwitnessed by either of them. It caught her in the chest and sent her hurtling back._

 _Red mingled with red. Her hair, suddenly damp with blood._

 _She saw him unsheathe his sword, trembling all the while._

" _Jaune," she said. "Don't."_

" _Pyrrha, t-this…" tears gathered at his corners. "This is all my fault. I shouldn't have come out on my own, I...I-"_

" _Ssh," she smiled, arm huddled around her middle as she slowly stood, blood dripping past the elbow. "It's mine, if anyone's."_

" _I'm sorry," he wailed, hand shakily gripping the pommel of Crocea Mors. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry-"_

 _She approached him, closing him in a tender embrace._

" _You might have been right, Jaune," her mouth moved against his cheek. "All along. If I've got the power to do something about it, then maybe I should. Any difference at all. Any person who suffers just that little bit less."_

" _P-Pyrrha, what-"_

" _But there's something you must learn," her hair, tickling his nose, staining it pink with residual blood. "Something at all costs."_

 _She let him go, carded strands of blonde behind his ear affectionately, and smiled. A sad, sordid expression._

 _Behind her thundered the monster as it drew close._

" _It is that_ **weight**." _she spoke it through grit teeth. Spoke it like a curse unfurled against her tongue. "That accompanies those who are made to fight. Jaune, remember one thing for me."_

 _He stood there dumbly, confusion pervading his features, eyes trained on her, unfocused to the hell at her back._

" _There should never be such a thing as heroes."_

 _And it came, hooves searing dirt._

"She told me to run, and not look back. That she'd keep it occupied for me."

Ruby did not let the similarity of past and present escape her. What almost happened now, did. Were it not for Jaune stepping in, she would have met the same fate.

"What really kills me," he fingered his tresses. "Is that to this day, I still know next to nothing about her. Not who she really was, not why she always seemed to carry around whatever burdens she did. I never found out what she meant in the end."

Between them hung silence. The quiet, smooth and lilting, as his story finished.

It wasn't like Ruby finally found the words, after a lifetime of being unable to, but she would try.

"I-I'm not going to pretend I knew what she wanted, Jaune," she swallowed. "I'm not gonna pretend that I know how deeply you cared for her. But I do know what it's like to lose someone."

She stepped around to his front. Slowly, ever so slowly, her fingertips touched his temple. They slid aside, threaded themselves through his bangs. Brushed the unruly lengths of gold behind his ear, and Jaune was struck with reminiscence. Of thoughts of Pyrrha doing the same.

Timidly, she hugged him, and their breaths took the same cadence.

"I don't even know what my own family would say to me if they were here," her murmur, the faintest brush of lips against his ear. "All I can tell you that they exist only in us."

They drew apart. She drew a slow, lingering smile, cast in silver by the faded moonlight, where there were stars no longer.

"Our memories are all what's left. We do it for them."

His next breath, misted silver in the cold, the moon, in the wake of her fathomless, pale eyes. A bated breath, as if he couldn't quite believe for the moments she looked at him.

"For them," he repeated. "For Pyrrha."

She nodded.

"They're all we've got to hold onto," she told him.

Jaune's eyes glazed over in something like sudden defiance. An unspoken "no". Still holding Ruby loosely by the waist.

"I've got you, now."

Her eyes, molten in their widening, enveloped by the sheen of surprise. It registered, and she momentarily thought.

And the moon beamed brighter than he'd ever remembered seeing it, spilling silver into the foliage, its light a flood, gleaming into sharp relief Ruby's dimpled mirth, her fingers playing a song along his shoulders.

For she laughed. And laughed and laughed as she was drenched in moonlight.

"So you do, Jaune! So you do."

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

Phew! Had a lot of trouble with this one. Really didn't like the initial draft, I had Ruby spew out all this nonsense that came out preachy and probably never what anyone would actually say. As it is now I dunno, but at least it has some semblance of a real conversation maybe. It's always difficult having a story told through a character's recall because it can easily come across as needless exposition. I hope I at least managed some genuine moments of connection between them.

As always this story is taking off without my conscious direction lol. This is getting a lot longer than I planned. Still, the showdown should be next chapter, so stay tuned!

Review? :D


	5. Show me yours, Part Five

**Author's Note:** Gosh this chapter was a bulldozer. Had a hard time with it, honestly. Kept you waiting, but hopefully you're all here for more!

* * *

The smoldering remains of their site accompanied horizon's first light, filtered gray and thin by morning.

Both huntsmen were punctual if nothing else, sitting across from the other, their packs ready even if they were not.

"I can't think of a scenario where we come out on top," Ruby lamented. "How are we meant to stop it? Even Pyrrha hardly left a dent."

Jaune sat, cross-legged, chin dumped unceremoniously into his palm. It caused his elbow to dig uncomfortably into the hollow of his thigh, but he seemed not to notice, eyes unfocused in contemplation.

"I've seen the Nuckelavee up close twice now," he began. "And I think...it's possible I have somewhat of a grasp on why it's so unbeatable."

Ruby blinked.

"Really?"

He folded his arms and hunched closer so his nose dipped low enough to smell the charcoal.

"I like to observe how they work. The Grimm, that is. Kinda my habit every time I see one."

"That's - that's great!" Ruby gushed. "Why didn't you say so sooner? I'm usually just charging headfirst without thinking it through."

"It's…" his brows furrowed so deep, lines creased starkly against his forehead. "It's impenetrable, as I'm sure you've noticed. Pretty much impervious."

"You're telling me," Ruby moaned, mirroring his posture, chin slumped against wrist. "I must've hacked at it something like two hundred times. Not a scratch."

"Did you-" he straightened himself. "Notice anything odd? Whenever you attacked it?"

"Uh," she frowned. "I mean, I was sorta preoccupied."

Her lips, suddenly pursed in concentration.

"Well, there was one thing. Sometimes when I struck it, it sort of...I dunno, changed?"

"Changed how?" he gestured for her to continue.

"Mmm. Don't really know. It's hard to describe, but I guess, like...its skin became all mucky. It sort of oozed like mud wherever I hit it, which is weird since my scythe _felt_ like it was whacking a solid brick wall most of the time."

Jaune's eyes fogged over in reverie. The blue of them throbbing with urgency as if behind them parts of him scattered but toppled into place, as if he were possessed and everything fell together in an incessant click-click-click.

"I think…" his mouth tried the words as if they were unfamiliar. "I've figured it out."

"F-Figured what out?" she asked.

"It's not anything like a crippling weakness. Heck, it's barely a revelation at all, but-"

Here, he excitedly snatched up a handful of rocks and pooled them at their feet.

"It's like this," and he stomped his shoe on the ground, before moving the rocks to that same spot. "Its defense isn't infinite. Its skin _concentrates_ to precisely wherever it's been attacked. It's why you see it distorting like slime. Of course, it's naturally tough beyond measure in the first place, so only a skilled huntsman could pull off the sort of attack that would even cause it to react like this."

"But…" she bit her lip. "What does that mean for us? Still sounds pretty hopeless to me."

"It's really quite incredible," Jaune babbled in response. "That its defense mechanism is so mechanically sound. I don't know if Grimm go through anything like evolution, but the fact that it has a system so instantaneously capable of creating armor consistent with its body of mass wherever required-"

He coughed, blushing.

"Sorry."

"Don't be, it's cute," she laughed, and he turned further crimson. "But I still don't see what we're supposed to do."

"If we had ten people as good as you, it would be feasible," he sighed. "As it is, maybe you're the only person in the world who could pull this off as part of a two-man party."

The first whispers of light over the horizon. Her eyes catching it, half-lidded and gleaming silver.

Jaune squirmed under her scrutiny. It was like being exposed to a storm, like she was ethereal and surely every bit of his imperfection would brandish itself like a musk; she, otherworldly, searing the flesh just lining the underside of his heart-

"Care to fill me in?" a small, dimpled smile. Still unsteady with the habitual beat of insecurity, but it told him-

She was Ruby. In the end, just Ruby. And time and again she's shown him she wasn't there to attack. That she wasn't there to pick him apart, seam by bleeding seam. He's done too much of that himself already.

"Sure," he smiled back. "But I'll tell you while we start walking back. So we can save time. Can't very well fight without your scythe, right?"

"What're you- Oh!" her mouth, agape, as it dawned.

"Yeah, it dropped when I picked you up. Hopefully the Nuckelavee didn't step on it or anything."

"Oh, don't _even_ scare me like that," she groaned. "I'm nothing without Crescent Rose."

Ruby morosely saddled her pack, Jaune quickly following her example.

"Lead the way," she told him, before swerving her gaze skyward and nearly sobbing in exclamation. "I'm coming for you, baby!"

"Uh," Jaune stared. "Right."

And they began their trek through the forest.

* * *

Ruby ran a finger along its sleek edge. Her other palm, wrapping a gentle grip across the handle.

"Right where we left it," Jaune remarked, glancing at Crescent Rose. "Good thing, huh?"

She nodded.

"It's not far," Jaune murmured, eyes misted over by distance as he peered along the canyon wall. "But last I saw, it was heading towards town. We have to go after it now, or count Vale finished."

Ruby followed his gaze, both arms now locked around her scythe, drawing comfort against the encroaching cold.

"Yeah," she replied. "I guess it's now or never."

"You remember the plan?" Jaune asked, his lips barely parting.

She nodded.

Silence, as both huntsmen were rooted to their spots, feet seemingly fastened to gravel.

"It isn't much of one," Jaune attempted to stir either of them, trying to laugh but it came out as an arching retch.

"No, I'm grateful we even have something to go on," Ruby smiled at him finally. "You're giving us the best chance we have."

He swallowed.

No further words as they sidled alongside the other, Ruby's hand hesitantly reaching out to thin air. Jaune's met it halfway, neither huntsman sparing the other a glance before setting a brisk pace towards the horizon, where the airship stood waiting.

* * *

The journey was made in two days.

They found it in the gaping valley adjacent to Vale. Under the suspended airship platform, the very sort of consummate squirming monstrosity that so inspired fear in Jaune before they left.

The air stilled in its presence. As if it's gouged out its own radius of staleness. Of motion distilled by the distinct, lurking presence of rot; of thick sludge not visible to the eye.

As if this small portion of the world had suddenly been eaten by an abyss, and both huntsmen were staring into it.

"The plan," Jaune's lips barely moved. "Stick to it. It's all we've got."

Ruby nodded, flashing him a brief, dreary smile.

And she was off like a transient flare.

It was like some twisted history repeating itself: Crescent Rose descending on dark, sinewy flesh, crimson flickering over Jaune's vision so he wasn't sure if it was Ruby's cloak or her blood.

Regardless, they had a job.

"Left side!" Jaune hollered, his shoes clattering against uneven stone outcroppings as he himself ran towards the clamor.

Roses descended like wildfire, tugging at his vision.

A fleeting gleam of silver, the squeal of metal on hardened tar.

Crescent Rose cleaved to the monster's left appendage, to no visible avail, before the other arm came in like a loosed rubber band, the thin, black strand of flesh ballooning so it was concave from wind pressure-

Ruby ducked, immediately transitioning to the creature's hooves, where her scythe struck another blow against the calves.

The flesh, squirming like maggots beneath skin, but again there was no damage.

"Another!" Jaune bellowed, Crocea Mors already free from its scabbard, stabbing towards the leg's underbelly from his vantage below.

Ruby jumped, shifting her focus back towards the arm, the fingers of it clicking and jerking, as if there were only bones, as if no such muscles were there to afford movement.

They swiped; she was already at the elbow, slashing with abandon, curved silver arcing back and forth like a pendulum and guillotine all at once, and Jaune was left to wonder not for the first time how her strength belied her stature, how she was able to wield something so massive but dangle it from one place to the other like a toothpick-

The screech came, and their earplugs weren't enough. Ruby winced, nearly slipping off her perch. That moment lost became more as the fingers stretched in her direction. Clumsily, she leapt away.

Clarity - for one quiet moment it seemed like peace. Like whistling birds and colored leaves and gold drifting against the skyline - and then the Nuckelavee charged.

The mask - milk-white, crooked, serpentine at the hinges - cracked against her back.

She screamed blood.

As she fell, however, Jaune was already there, catching her with blistered palms, Crocea Mors still skidding away in circles, his teeth still grit against the sound of her pain.

"It's okay," he muttered - to her or himself he didn't know. "It's okay, it's okay."

His hands glowed that sickly emerald, illuminating his callouses, pinpricks of light huddled between them as he cradled her broken body to his.

She gasped, eyes once listless now peering silver as they flew open. She fumbled out of his arms, her thumb hastily swiping away a trail of blood from her lip.

Breathing heavily, she asked, "How many left?"

"Two," he gulped. "At least, I think."

She nodded, turning her gaze to the sludge-like mass creeping towards them.

"Try not to die," Jaune beseeched. "I know we're in over our heads, and we don't know what we're doing, but just...don't. Please."

"I'll see what I can do," her lips quirked wryly. The sight of it cut into him, a savage grip on his heart, but he did his best to smile back.

A streak of robed red, and she was again at the monster's left.

Her blade resumed its deadly squall, carving at blackened, stretched skin, meeting the thin apex of the arm repeatedly. Yet again, worms wriggling just underneath, but that was the moment they needed.

Jaune saw. He dug in his pack, withdrawing a vial. It, like the first, glowed a listless copper at its bottom.

He tossed it at the monster's clawed front hoof, and it erupted. Scorching blaze dispersed from the impact, licking flesh, charring it blacker, gliding languidly over the forest floor as the Nuckelavee screeched and flailed.

The telltale writhing where flames met its ankle, just as above, where Ruby ruthlessly engraved her fury.

The wriggling on its arm grew to a mound, bulged like a human cheek. The huntsmen's ears continued to bleed from the screeching.

"Switch!" Jaune shrieked over the cacophony.

In the space of a breath, Ruby was suddenly in front of him, slashing at the ankle.

The mound at its arm froze, then ceased, before blooming instead where Ruby attacked.

"Again!" his voice was hoarse from being projected over the monster's.

And but for the deluge of roses, she wasn't with him.

Crescent Rose, true to its namesake, dipped like a partial moon, curving up to the hollow of the creature's shoulder. Ruby's eyes spoke fire, her breath long, lethal strands of intent.

The Nuckelavee's arm severed off like a burst of ink, a diffusion of dark clasping weakly to itself, as if desperately attempting to hold its last vestiges of semblance, before snapping away like viscous black magma, drooling over the earth.

The screeching grew to an absolute din. The remaining arm retaliated, too quick to react. Ruby was still suspended from her assault when spindled fingers dug callously into her back.

From their purchase, they flung her to the gravel. It was apparent that her voice had already given out as she quietly hung from the relentless grip.

Jaune ran over, granules of that coppery red held carefully between three fingers.

He slammed his hand, open palm, against the giant's exposed wrist. Flames unfurled from the mote of contact, the explosion causing the monster to flinch and withdraw his appendage.

Jaune's hand had been set ablaze, his skin raw and crimson, charcoaled almost as black as the Nuckelavee's, but he paid it no heed as he crouched over Ruby.

The burnt hand had roughened to being like snakehide as he clutched Ruby to his chest and again he glowed that sickly green.

The familiar gasp. Sudden, dainty fingers scrabbling at his shoulders for purchase.

Forehead still pressed tightly to his shoulder, eyes downcast and squeezed shut, she asked him.

"We got it?" she breathed, lungs brittle with exhaustion.

"Yeah," he held her, rubbing comforting circles at her back. "One of its arms."

By now however much of Ruby's outfit that had been black was plated with browned blood.

The Nuckelavee was thrashing, its claws clutching at trees and tearing them from their roots, its hooves displacing foliage, its ceaseless screeching reverberating in hollows of gouged earth.

"It worked," she whispered, eyes still firmly shut.

"Ruby, I don't like this. You're...you're in agony each time, one misstep it's over and I won't be able to bring you back-"

A finger to his lips.

"We don't really have another way, Jaune," that forlorn grin he was growing much too used to seeing. "We can't back out now. One left?"

"O-One," he confirmed, dread sprouting in his chest like a parasite.

"Your hand…" she suddenly remarked, eyes wide.

"Oh," he grimaced at his blackened fingers. "Don't worry about it. It's nothing compared to what you're going through."

They looked towards the stockstill rampage.

"Now's the time. Its internals are in disarray because of the shock. I'm out of Dust, though, so I can't provide as much of a distraction for its defense system."

Ruby nodded. She jumped, flitting into the chaos.

A pause. No one's breath. And tendrils whipped by, narrowly missing Ruby as her boots skidded her halt.

The creak of bone, grating on their ears. The grotesque swell and pull of sinew, of whirling flesh as the Nuckelavee's torso spun. Unnaturally, impossibly, it spun and spun until the remaining arm dissolved into a maelstrom, the horse-like foundation somehow distinctly rooted.

It ate into the forest, devouring its surroundings. The very air was pungent with havoc as the twirling flesh destroyed everything in its wake.

Its speed was such that even Ruby was on the backfoot, scarcely avoiding the nick of what surely would have spelled her immediate demise.

"Jaune!" she yelled, flying towards him. "If-If that touches-!"

"Yeah, I know!" he called back even as he sprinted back from the clearing, even as the black culling descended on them both.

Ruby overtook him, hauling him bodily up over her shoulder, blurring until she was a smudge of crimson amidst fleeting greenery.

Greenery which became dust, became nothing but soil and barren landscape as the Nuckelavee tore it asunder.

They reached their airship, bypassing it just as the monster galloped through.

A beat. Another. Until a mess of punctured wood and fractured steel lining was all that remained.

"I can end it, Jaune!" Ruby exclaimed.

"What?" he hollered, hardly able to hear over the madness.

"Your Semblance lets you give me your Aura, right?" she demanded. "Well, give what you have left! All of it! I'll end it in one strike!"

"But its defense system-"

"It can't possibly keep that up, tornadoing about like that. The energy it would take to do both would be crazy! The only reason it's giving us this chance at all is 'cause it's agitated!"

"That's-"

She was right. In theory. But then theory was all they were operating on up until now.

Regardless, Jaune hated it.

"Ruby, you'll die for sure!" he trembled. "There's no way you can jump into _that_ and not come out a bloody mess!"

"It's our one shot! Once it calms down we don't have enough in us to keep breaking its defense, and you know that, Jaune! Now give me the rest!"

"If I do, I won't have any left to heal y-"

" _ **Jaune!**_ **"**

And her eyes were searching his. Pools of molten silver, pale and gleaming and he was enveloped, was burning and frozen at the same instance, liquid and stainless and scalding him into motion-

His hands glowed green almost without his consent. Wordlessly, like he was drifting in a starless vacuum, he touched his hands to hers. The Aura funneled itself until he felt dry.

Ruby was ablaze. Her body was hot, sent to a searing inferno, and she smiled wearily at him.

He was dropped onto a patch of wilting flowers.

Could only watch helplessly as Ruby turned around, waltzing through the air into the black turbulence.

A mighty cry, as she swung Crescent Rose, the blade arcing from starless sky to ruined ground.

It caught the mask like it would bone, clattering before it dug in.

Momentarily, she hung, suspended above the ebony whirlpool.

The Nuckelavee's mask splintered as Crescent Rose dragged itself through gamy flesh, as steel carved through the bubbling, fetid mass and came unblemished out the other end.

A flash, so bright it burned Jaune's retinas as he was thrown back by the force of it. Beneath his eyelids was colored nonsense: greens and reds and blended midnights.

He groggily heaved himself standing.

"R-Ruby…" drained of nearly everything, he trundled slowly towards the site.

The ground was charred in outward, intermittent patterns. The monster's face, bleeding black and decorated with shards of bone from mask and body, was shoved inward, sucked in as if by some sour gag in a sordid cartoon.

Lying prone next to it was Ruby.

"N-No…"

Her chest was run through by a severed black finger. Her right arm, several meters away, its palm curiously blistered. Where it should have been was an empty socket, ruptured red.

But the black mass rumbled. Hooves scooped fruitlessly at thin air as the monster's arm flung itself, whiplike.

Jaune, gritting his teeth, stepped towards it, Crocea Mors drawn in both hands.

He arrived at the head, no longer resembling much of anything. Sword pointed down, he drove it in.

And in again. And again and again until he was covered in spurts of grime, his disheveled mop of usual blonde now coated with inky black.

The hooves stilled.

Then they upended, throwing him back in shock.

Teetering upright, the creature stood itself, one dangling appendage along its side. Its hooves scuffed the floor repeatedly as the main body swayed, its movement drunken.

In front of Jaune was a mess of limbs and turgid recollection. Darkness in shambles.

But-

"I've got no Aura left," he muttered, hardly able to stand firmly himself. "Not for this."

The Nuckelavee lumbered closer.

Above, what might have been starlight, what might been an illusion.

But next to him, a moan of frustration he hardly dared believe:

"WHY,"

Red lining the corners of his vision.

"WON'T,"

Weighted steps, the familiar tension of musculature, a leap-

"YOU,"

The hoarse, elegant patter of rainfall.

"JUST,"

Blinded by it, by she who tore him open and scattered his insides until his fears boiled themselves raw, because she in that moment was so, so beautiful-

"DIE."

Scythe clutched onehanded, gripped so tight she bled, Ruby beheaded it in one spectacular stroke.

Before collapsing, she grinned at him, her corners scarlet.

"Sorry, Jaune. I'll say hi to Pyrrha for you."

The world swirled its colors around her descent. Her eyes half-lidded and fading, she swears she saw stars.

It was as she fell that she thought she'd heard it in her delirium.

"The hell you will."

* * *

A gasp.

Ruby sat up like a rocket, covers flung to the side.

"Hey."

She stared at Jaune, who was staring at her.

"But...I-"

"Oh, yes," he nodded as if to agree.

He was being cheeky, so she at least didn't want her first question to afford him satisfaction.

"Where are we?" she noted as forest once again surrounded them. For once, there was a path, sloping its way to the horizon.

"A mile from Vale," he remarked mildly.

Moments, where vestiges of daylight peeked over mountains in the distance.

Ruby, of course, couldn't maintain aloofness for long.

"Okay, please explain."

"Well," Jaune's rolled his chin on his knees. "I've been your partner just long enough to realize what an absurdly _reckless fool_ you are."

"I resent that!" she gasped.

He arched a brow.

"...Please, continue," she offered meekly.

"When I saw just how willing you were to sacrifice yourself for the mission," he frowned. "I knew fighting the Nuckelavee with your life intact wouldn't be feasible for very long. I mean, we were lucky to have lived at all, but I knew you would stop at nothing."

He was quiet. Ruby bit her lip, eyes roving his, searching that once-discomfiting ocean for answers.

"I lied to you."

"You...lied?"

He nodded.

"I told you that I had enough reserves to give you Aura three times," he held up three fingers. "But really, it was four."

"What-" her anger bubbled. "But that's...concealing vital information like that, how could you-"

"I know," his gaze was downcast. "I know how jeopardizing that could've been. How it could've ruined our chances completely, how it looks like I didn't trust you."

He sighed.

"But, in that moment I told you my plan…in that moment, everything else kind of faded from my mind. Vale, our mission, the Nuckelavee. All I could think about was how I was about to lose you."

Ruby's lips parted. Her eyes shimmered.

"If you knew I had reserves, you would have asked me to give all of it regardless of your well-being. You _did_ , in fact. Ruby, I didn't want a repeat of Pyrrha. To be helpless and do nothing as you-"

His throat was hoarse.

"More than anything," he gulped. "More than _anything_ , I didn't want you to die."

She hugged him.

Cheek pressed to his, chin propped on his shoulder, arm curled tightly around his neck.

"You're something else, Jaune," her whisper brushed the shell of his ear.

"Not as much as you," he smiled weakly.

She faltered.

"Uh-"

Drawing back, she realized.

"My arm."

"Yeah," he winced. "I saved you from dying, but...your body's processes couldn't possibly restore something like that."

Staring vividly, now aware of it, Ruby abruptly felt the distinct hollow vacancy from where her right shoulder began.

No blood, but the sheen of tissue was left scarred as the stump wiggled with her movement.

The gleam of her eyes dimmed.

"Well, that's a bummer," she laughed, the tight clutch of her left hand belying her levity.

"I'm sorry, I should've tried harder-"

"Oh, don't you _dare_ apologize, Jaune," she glared. "You're the only reason I'm still here."

She blinked.

"We did it," as it dawned upon her. "We did it, didn't we?"

In response, Jaune reached into his pack.

From his fingers dangled something bone-white, thin splinters running jaggedly across the surface, ending in a partial horn. The severed expression of a skull.

"We did," Ruby whispered. "We beat the Nuckelavee. The stuff of legends, just the two of us."

"Vale is safe from the Nuckelavee. Whether the huntsmen back home could handle the Grimm horde while we were away, I can't say," Jaune confirmed. "But we've done all we could. At least we can claim that much."

"Jaune-"

She hugged him again, sobbing.

"Thank you," she cried. "Thank you. For Vale. For me. I didn't wanna die. I didn't, you know?"

His own eyes welling with tears, he gripped her so close he couldn't tell where she ended and he began.

"I should be the one saying that," he croaked. "Without Pyrrha, I was living like a shadow. Choking on my own breath. I thought I'd never surface, but you brought me back to myself."

In the distance were the distinct outline of buildings. A low cadence - of what might be terror, slaughter, of what might be the din of celebration and respite - drifted dimly towards the pair.

As the sun dipped below its gravel border, Vale bled orange. Shade, cast bleakly by dying light, serrated the once-kingdom down the middle, made crooked by stone outcroppings and masonry.

Whether it had survived, Ruby and Jaune did not know.

But for that moment, huddled against the other, they breathed.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

PHEW. Ruby/Jaune arc is completed! As I said, they'll be back for sure, but we're gonna focus on some others' stories and see how they're involved. Honestly, I dislike it when there's so much action crammed into a story, but I sort of needed it to exclaim just how monumental the Grimm are with my take on them. It's unlikely there'll be _this much_ action from here on, but we'll see. I tried to temper it with some poetic license anyway, so hopefully all the fighting wasn't too grating on the nerves or exhausting to take in.

I feel kinda bleh about how I wrote the final scenes, but at least I finally finished. I'll try to keep it together for the next ones.

Sneak peek for next arc: "We need help, James! What will be enough of a reminder that no one can survive alone? Not Mistral? Not Oz? Atlas cannot continue this isolation, or it won't be the only place that pays the price!"

Let me know what you thought!


	6. By Blood, Part One

The screen was splayed wide, adorning the wall so that the corners were hidden.

A man was projected onto it, his stern visage made giant so that every pore amidst the scruff of his half-shaved jaw was visible. A crop of flat, black hair. Chin, square and set with tension.

"Glynda," he inclined his head. "I am glad to see you are unhurt."

A woman, blonde hair twisted into bun, frayed wisps falling into her eyes, stood facing the screen.

"No thanks to you," she seethed, teeth grit, fingers clenched against her desk. "Is that all you have to say?"

"There's no need for that," he reproached. "I don't see why we cannot converse like colleagues."

"Oh, you wouldn't," she spat. "Vale was nearly wiped off the map. There wouldn't have been a trace remaining, and you _sit_ there in Atlas, sipping your coffee and lining up your toy soldiers without lifting a single finger to help!"

"But here you are," he noted calmly. "Clearly you underestimate yourself, seeing as you drove off the Grimm horde successfully."

"By the skin of our teeth!" a curled fist pressed against cheap wood. "It was a damned near thing, James! Vale endures on bare _stitches_ at the moment. If two of our huntsmen hadn't brought down the Nuckelavee by some forsaken miracle, I wouldn't be here talking to you."

"The Nuckelavee was defeated by _two_ huntsmen?" a glint in his depths of steely blue. "Glynda, that's-"

"Not the point," she interrupted, snarl forming in her lips. "I won't let them be part of your little recruitment project."

"If they're so talented as to have done such a thing, then people need to _see-"_

"Are you _**hearing**_ me, James?!" Glynda swept her arm irately, toppling her lamp. "Does nothing matter to you?"

Her breath hitched.

"Do _I_ not matter anymore?"

It was this, more than anything, that gave him pause. James' jaw took the faint outline of bone as his fingers steepled.

The telltale stitch of weariness along his eyes.

"It's not about whether or not I care," he said, tone seeped with gravity. "It's about the kingdom I maintain. Vale cannot be my priority when I must see to every seam of security along Atlas' borders-"

"So you're going to leave us to die. Is that it?"

"Grimm have crawled up the sides of every wall, every inch across the land," he retorted, irritation creeping along the line of his mouth. "If I turn my attentions away from Atlas for even a moment - even half of one - then they'll breach the walls and tear everything apart."

"Atlas is mankind's only remaining stronghold," Glynda breathed, her breath fanning into the distance between her and the monitor. "Vacuo is just about finished, Vale is on its last legs - all of us, scattered to the corners of the globe. All separate, docile little lambs waiting quietly for death."

"Then what would you have me _do_?" Sharp teeth, clenched. Eyes narrowed furiously against the grain of static on her screen.

"We need help, James. What will be enough of a reminder that no one can survive alone? Not Mistral? Not Oz? Atlas cannot continue this isolation, or it won't be the only place that pays the price."

His forehead rested heavily against his folded fingers, his gaze downcast and shrouded.

Silence perverted the room, made the air lethal and liable to sever either of them apart.

"I cannot, Glynda."

"Vale is barely alive," she urged. "Persisting on the meager strength of whoever's left. With the Grimm still attacking when we're so vulnerable, recovery is nothing short of a fool's dream."

Elbows, clothed in white, scraping the pristine surface of Atlesian architecture.

"Three," he muttered. "I can spare three."

"Three huntsmen? That will hardly-"

"No more than that," he asserted. "You're lucky I'll part with this much. They're three of my best, too. They'd have to be, to even attempt the journey to Vale."

Glynda stared at him. Her eyes roved the form of the man she once knew. At his control. At his ironclad expression. At the stubble dotting his chin and the swirling, steely blue of his eyes.

"I understand," she sighed. "Very well, James."

Her finger floated over to the control pad.

"I hope to see you in person at least once more before we die," she told him, closing the transmission.

* * *

Weiss sighed, propping open the door with her foot, easing her way uncomfortably into the bar.

Upon a stool sat a man, thin-faced and gaunt, but sporting a lazy smile as he saw her walk in. In front of him clattered several empty glasses, amber dripping slowly in their dregs.

"Hey there, li'l sis," he grinned, wordlessly waving down the bartender for another drink.

" _Don't_ ," she seethed. "Call me that. Where's Winter?"

"Why, you need her?" the man mumbled, downing his next glass.

"Both of you," she clarified. "We have a mission, Qrow."

"Well, we get those all the time. 'S so special about this one?"

"Just get Winter and meet me at the plaza fountain," she growled. "Ten minutes, or you'll find my foot wedged in your ass."

"You got it, princess," Qrow chortled.

Her hair fell like a curtain of snow as she swiveled to face the entrance. It was the last thing he saw, draped in waves over her shoulders, as the door slammed shut in her wake.

* * *

Atlas remained a kingdom like no other. Around her, walls of gleaming white towered over the unmistakable bustle of activity, of warm bodies shoving each other with callous courtesy, of shopping complexes tapered at their edges by throngs of excitement and demand, flesh grabbing savagely at modern convenience.

Weiss glanced at her surroundings, scowl etched on her features, her back lightly peppered by spray from the fountain. She sat, one pale leg crossed over the other, arms folded and finger tapping anxiously at her elbow.

So many years have jaded her to it. Once, she might have thought the same as these passersby. That life like this could be maintained. That Atlas, and its walls, and its strength, could protect them.

But the truth had blared its cruel tune too often for her to not to know.

Luxury was a demon.

The pillars of marble. The buildings, lined with steel, adorned with polish. Hands and laughter exchanged, the city a dome of safety.

It was false. All of it. The kingdom only subsisted on the corpses of others. A pristine facade, teetering precariously on top of rubble and ruin.

The only pillars in question were the ones willing to fight. The huntsmen. Her. Her sister. And-

"Weiss."

She looked up.

Her sister approached, hair white gleaming white like polished diamond, twisted into a bun. Behind her was Qrow, yawning audibly into his hand.

"What's so urgent?"

Weiss reached into her pocket and withdrew a crinkled leaf of parchment.

"New mission. S-Class."

Her sister arched a brow. The effect was not unlike a snowflake, buoyed by wind.

"What sort of Grimm?" Winter probed.

"Not any one in particular, though I'm sure we'll run into the nastier types anyway," Weiss shook her head. "The three of us are supposed to travel to Vale."

Winter's eyes widened.

"To Vale," she repeated.

Weiss nodded.

"General Ironwood has commissioned us to go lend Vale aid in the wake of the Grimm horde. Their huntsmen have dwindled since the attack, so we're to go help them get on their feet."

"It's standard practice now to throw away some of his best people to their deaths, is it?" Qrow drawled suddenly, stepping up beside the fountain.

"It's _because_ the general trusts us to such a degree that he gave this task to us," Weiss spat, eyes like thinning glaciers, the blue of them narrowed into hostile slits. "He knows that no one else would be able to do it."

"He's the boss," Qrow shrugged, not without a hint of mockery. "Gotta say, some _trust_ it is, us against who knows what, and _we're_ supposed to go help _them_? We've got our hands full as it is."

As Weiss stood, no doubt to angrily retort, Winter stepped between them both.

"That's enough," a stern hand placed on both their shoulders. "There's no point in squabbling now. We have our orders, and dangerous though it may be, we've proved time and again that we can handle anything the Grimm throw at us. Qrow is right to show caution, but all we can do now is be prepared."

Weiss bit her lip, suppressing her venom for the time being.

"Fine. Tomorrow at sunrise, both of you meet me at the gates."

She turned her back, walking briskly away on uneven cobblestone, her steps clacking in tempo with her frustration.

"Weiss-"

Winter sighed, before glaring at Qrow.

"Must you antagonize her so? You know how she is around you."

"My bad, Snowflake," he chuckled. "I honestly don't mean to. She doesn't exactly make it easy to play nice, though."

"Well, try harder. It's important to me that the two of you get along."

As she began walking beside him, her fourth finger winked against the sunlight.

* * *

Dawn broke. Towers severed the sky, wavered like living shadows, less building and more monolith. Orange splashed quietly across smooth pavement. It crept on the plaza like cream, like the softest of poisons.

The three of them stood, dwarfed by the wall which stretched impossibly up against red heaven.

In front of them, a double-set, massive door, embroidered with gold. It stretched above the height of any building, the rim of it thick and plated, so smooth their reflection peered back, stilted and warped thin.

Their packs secure on their backs, small compared to the weapons dragging along polished floor.

In Qrow's case, slung from shoulder to foot.

"The trip would only be a week, max, by airship," he moaned.

"We'd be defenseless and torn apart by flying Grimm within 2 days' travel," Weiss scoffed. "Even you know that, so stop with the jokes."

"Just sulking," Qrow gave an exaggerated sigh. "Don't mind your ol' bro Qrow."

"Again, not your sister," she said even as she trudged towards the gates.

Winter rolled her eyes, before staring at her companions' backs retreating into the distance.

"Even if we survive," she muttered under her breath.

"This is going to be a _long_ trip."

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

The Weiss, Qrow, Winter arc begins. Not exactly sure how long it's going to be. Vague estimate, probably shorter than the last one. Also, the chapters themselves might be shorter on average since the pace I'm feeling with this storyline fits smaller episodes, as you might have noticed with this one. Hope no one minds. Maybe that means I'll update more frequently?! hahaha _dies inside_

Feedback? :D I'd love to know everyone's thoughts.


	7. By Blood, Part Two

Part of why Atlas remained the only bastion of relative safety came from the fact that it was situated along a mountain range, the front of it protected by natural crags and summits. Its peak drew itself among clouds and atmospheric vapor. If one couldn't see past the mountainous base, it seemed almost as if the kingdom was afloat.

It was peering down the sheer cliffs from Atlas' gate that Qrow once more voiced his disdain.

"Again, wouldn't have to climb down all this if we took a ship."

"If you don't stop complaining I'll be happy to toss you over and save you the trip," Weiss spat over her shoulder at him.

Qrow sighed, internally knowing he was griping just to gripe.

" _Don't call me that. Where's Winter?"_

 _Qrow looked at her oddly, even drunk as he was._

 _Swallowing, he answered._

" _Why, you need her?"_

"Now, now," Winter soothed. "You know that's Qrow's way of shooting the breeze. Don't take him too seriously."

"You're much too soft on him," Weiss muttered.

Qrow stood, a little dumbfounded. Before him, Winter seemed like an angel, shimmering at her edges. Blue in her eyes, at her fingertips, the blue of the sky slipping between the crags brimming her figure starkly.

He swallowed.

"Yeah," he mumbled. "Yeah."

Sighing, he drew long, blistered fingers into his pack and retrieved a thin slip of material filmed by plastic.

His gaze wandered languidly over the photo as he and Weiss continued trekking down the slope. Winter trailing between them, her skirt ghosting along like drapery. Her finger, still winking against the harsh beams of morning.

Weiss noticed. Her brows drew together in ill-disguised acrimony.

"Still dwelling over that picture, huh?" she growled "Still whiling long hours away wondering about your actual family?"

Qrow's eyes flicked over to her.

"Weiss…" his tone lost the edges of its usual hoarseness, instead soft, instead a hesitant rumble. "Weiss, you know I-"

"Whatever," she scoffed. "It's none of my business."

Between them, Winter's concerned visage drifted, a cloud of melancholy.

" _Must you antagonize her so? You know how she is around you."_

 _Qrow's eyes were slits of crimson, darting to Weiss' retreating back and then to Winter's reproachful stare._

 _He took her in. Her form. And it was due to a moment of weakness that he succumbed, that he allowed himself the unforgivable._

" _My bad, Snowflake," he replied, his chuckle suddenly thick like blood, like his gaze, like gravity encroaching on his every bit of stature, rooting him. "I honestly don't mean to. She doesn't exactly make it easy to play nice, though."_

"Weiss, please," Winter reached out a hand, pale and gentle. "Qrow has a right to try and find out about her."

Qrow's neck jerked his gaze to Winter, his teeth set firm against the sight of Winter imploring her sister so tenderly.

Weiss shrugged the hand off of her shoulder, her eyes twin furnaces of animosity as she marched towards Qrow and ripped the photo from his grasp.

Much of the mountain stretched tall behind them.

"A right? A right?" she cried brandishing the photo in front of Qrow like a weapon. "Don't you think that we have a right? That _you_ do, Winter?"

The picture emblazoned at the front, fading due to years of wear, was of a petite girl, red hood drawn over a head of black tinged crimson. Her smile, wide and crooked. Her eyes, molten silver as they brimmed with excitement.

"A right to not be abandoned by him whenever he finally finds whoever this is and goes gallivanting off? That he won't _leave_ you at the drop of a hat? You're his fiance and he might just be _gone_ one day _-"_

"I wouldn't leave you!" Qrow roared, making no move to snatch the photo back. "I…"

He bit his lip, darting a glance at Winter - soft hair fell like snow, lips pursed and frozen, eyes ripples of beautiful sleet burnt blue and sharp - before looking back.

 _The summer of their courtship passed like a storm. Swirling, breathy nonsense and Qrow honestly never found himself so happy since he first woke up in the kingdom. His fingers, coarse, hers unfettered and smooth, threaded together._

" _I was here in Atlas one day," he explained to her. "Without an idea of who I was. But with you I've never been more sure."_

 _Winter laughed. It was velvety, drawn from deep in her throat, a balm to his senses against the cold._

" _I didn't take you for such a romantic when I met you."_

" _You bring out the worst in me."_

" _Annnd it's gone."_

"I just want to remember," he spoke it like he was hollow. "It's been years since I've forgotten and I just want to have some of it back. Some of who I used to be. It's not like I'd find her anyway, it's been too long. But even if I did, it changes nothing. You _are_ my family, Weiss. You know that."

Weiss almost retorted, rancor thick on her tongue, but she clamped it down.

"Right," she muttered, turning back to the trail without another word.

Winter smiled sadly at him, before shadowing Weiss' step once more.

"Never doubt it," she murmured, to Weiss or Qrow or both it was unclear. "Never doubt that we are family."

 _Weiss appraises him warily. Apprehension set itself about the bone of her shoulders, the tempered steel of her eyes, thundering blue like her sister's._

 _The alleyway was narrow where she'd told him to meet her. The stale vapors of week-old mold and factory smoke._

" _So you and my sister."_

" _Y-Yeah," Qrow cursed himself for quaking under her scrutiny. He was older, wasn't he? The mature one out of the two, wasn't he?_

 _Alas._

" _All I've got to say is you'd better do right by her," Weiss tapped an impatient finger against her elbow._

" _I will!" it came out high-pitched and squeaky, so apart from his usual gravel. "I mean, that is to say...we'll take care of each other. I'll make her happy, I promise."_

 _A few more cruel moments of Qrow teetering on his cliff, buoyed only by the storms behind her eyes._

 _But quite suddenly, her lips tugged minutely at its corners. Small, barely discernible, but a smile nonetheless._

" _Alright, then. But go back on your word," she explained cheerfully. "And crows'll be picking at your corpse when I'm through with you."_

* * *

"Glynda, there's been a change of plans. Penny can't make it. She has urgent business."

"James, you said you'd spare up to-"

"I know what I said, but it can't be helped. The others are currently traveling to Vale, as planned."

"...It's better than nothing, I suppose. There's not much I can do but wish them luck."

"You and I both."

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

I know it's short, but this seemed like the appropriate place to cut it. The writing of this one was more concise and truncated as compared to my usual style I feel. That might be a good or bad thing that I might or might not continue in the vein of for this arc.

If there are slight bits of awkward/confusing pacing this chapter it's on purpose. Or at least it should be lol.

Leave a review and let me know what you thought!


	8. By Blood, Part Three

" _Go back!_ _ **Go back for her!"**_

" _Weiss, we can't-"_

" _No, no, let me down! Let me down, GO BACK!"_

* * *

"Finally," Qrow groaned, bending backwards until he heard his bones pop. "We're out of those godforsaken mountain ranges. I hate going downhill."

Weiss ignored him, instead narrowing her gaze onto a dilapidated wooden post. A sign hung precariously from visibly crooked nails. The lettering was faded, smeared faint and spliced by woodgrains.

"Mistral," her lips hardly moved.

Winter placed a hand on her shoulder, like fleeting snow, like powder dissipating at the warmth of her body. Weiss barely felt it.

"We've visited once, remember?" Winter's voice lilted, soft and meandering. "Back before we met Qrow. It was quite a sight to behold, Mistral. Built on the inside of cliffs, not as high up as Atlas, but the way the kingdom spiraled into itself was beautiful. People from all walks of life, coloring the streets."

"Well," Weiss frowned. "The sign says we're about a day's walk away. We have to pass through before we get to Vale."

"And I have to lug this thing the whole way," Qrow sighed, tugging the straps of his pack tighter so they dug into his collarbone. Along the rim of the zipper was an opening, through which poked something slender and metallic. What could be seen of it was dotted with minute joints, shaped with sleek curves.

"Careful with that," Weiss hissed. "It's custom-made. Delivering it to her in pieces would do _wonders_ for Atlas' reputation, I'm sure."

"Vale's premier huntsman," Qrow grunted, ignoring the bite of her sarcasm. "Still can't believe she took down a Nuckelavee. 'S unheard of, right?"

"She had help, apparently."

But it seemed as if Weiss had tired of the subject for she did not elaborate, leaving Qrow to wrestle with the contents of his bag, finally shoving the loose appendage in after a considerable struggle.

"We should be careful," came Winter's drifting whisper, ghosting over the shell of Qrow's ears. Imperceptibly, he winced.

"Around here in particular," she continued, her lips hardly moving. "Are supposed to lurk incredibly dangerous Grimm. Skilled as we are, one misstep will mean our deaths."

Weiss uncrumpled some parchment, before leveling it against the shimmer of twilight, throwing some crude pencil markings into sharp relief.

"There's one," she responded, peering at the smudged ink. "That we should steer clear of no matter what."

"Vale's already dealt with a Nuckelavee," Qrow rasped. "Don't tell me there's another."

"Worse," Weiss grimly stowed the parchment into her bag, shouldering it with pointed disdain.

From above, the luster of eternal dusk, wrapping Weiss' next words in a sheen of dread.

"The Dragon."

* * *

The edge of the plateau loomed into view and to their front: dilapidated roofs, splintered gravel, and the telltale musk of abandonment. Along the serrated ground were sunken bases of streetlamps, swallowed nearly whole by the earth.

"The ruins of Mistral," murmured Winter, her eyes tinged white.

"I haven't actually been here after the fact," Weiss shook her head. "I didn't realize just how badly it was…"

"Leveled. Annihilated," Qrow mumbled. "The Grimm didn't just do a number on 'em, they read 'em the entire goddamned times table."

"It's dangerous here," Winter's steps toward the precipice overlooking the former kingdom were so quiet it was like she fit right in. A ghost living among ghosts. "Because even now there lingers resentment. Agony. Slow knives of despair twisting into hearts, felt to this day, where Mistral fell."

"The souls of the departed, manifesting as Grimm," she whispered. "I wouldn't put it past them, would you?"

"Let's go," Weiss demanded. "We're not tourists. The sooner we go through the sooner we can reach Vale."

They descended the spiral walkway, somehow still intact, into the broken city.

There was the distinct hiss of crushed glass under their heels as they walked, its color a smoky amber. More bottles littered the crooked sidewalk, mingling with discarded wrappers and the suggestive spatter of blood, browned by age.

Strands of it, along the facade of the few houses still upright, streaked across collapsed windows and piles of bone.

Qrow suppressed an involuntary shudder.

"It's quiet," said Winter.

"The Grimm-" Qrow started, and then in front of him erupted a black geyser.

From it, limbs bulged into existence. Writhing black muck congealed and formed a claw. A shroud of feathers.

Qrow's hoarse tenor reverberated across the trench.

"A Nevermore! Weiss, your Semb-"

But she had already pressed two fingers to the hilt of her saber, her feet rooted amidst a glyph rapidly expanding to either boundary of the crooked street.

Qrow leapt off a mess of decrepit scaffolding, bunching his knees before propelling himself onto the monster.

His scythe, drawn and hooked along the ridge of flesh bordering the Nevermore's wing.

It took to the skies, shrieking a din so forcefully the skeleton of a house was ripped from its teetering hinges. Qrow winced, but maintained his hold, being dragged alongside the Grimm into the air.

Looking up, only then did Qrow gaze upon the full enormity of the creature. Its size dwarfed the buildings, its beak level with the distant faces of sheer cliffs. Its wings, outstretched at full span, blotted out the sky, casting the entire valley with shadow.

Its claw lunged for Qrow, but a hand - titanic, pale, rimmed with a glacial vapor - emerged from the dust, from Weiss' intricate earth-encompassing glyph, colliding with the Nevermore's jaw, decidedly unhinging it.

Its grip slackened, freeing Qrow, who landed without a modicum of grace and more than a few expletives.

The hand, and its twin, clutched the edges of the glyph as if the ground itself was ephemeral, was merely a foothold in the phantom nothingness from whence the limbs came. Together, they hauled the body up. A head, ghostly and plated silver. Shoulders, broad and square.

The knight, near as massive as the Grimm, bent its knee towards its master, eyes brimmed with white swirling fury in place of pupils.

Fluttering wisps at her elbow told Weiss Winter had drawn up next to her.

"We'll attack together," she heard from her sister, her voice like snowfall.

Weiss nodded, pointing her saber, directing her avatar towards the darkness, which began to lumber forward, Winter landing gracefully on its shoulder.

"Another Grimm," Weiss' eyes were half-lidded in concentrating, sweat beading her brow.

At their front, Qrow brandished his scythe.

Her whisper seemed to beckon with it lilting shadow, seemed to travel along the seams of wood of broken columns, splintered stems of a village no more, seemed to deafen her surroundings, quiet as it was.

Yet could not deafen the wrongness. The memory of Winter's voice in her ear, of Qrow giving her that glance, the sight of her sister now, rushing to battle.

There was darkness at their fore, but her heart thrummed with it. The monstrous bird screeched. She would kill it, of course. Blood coursed erratically through her veins and what she was searching for would not come, only that it was wrong. Wrong, _wrong-_ dread with the consistency of sludge, ears ringing with Winter's murmur-

"Just another Grimm," she told herself.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Yes, I live. Yes, this is going somewhere I promise. I'm sorry it's so short for so long a wait.

More to come so stay tuned!


End file.
